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Young Freud posted:Remember, hoofs aren't hands, they're FINGERS. Actually they're fingerNAILS.
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Apr 23, 2020 06:20
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The Lone Badger posted:Actually they're fingerNAILS. valid to eat fingers valid to eat fingers
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Apr 23, 2020 06:27
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 Heart: The City Beneath 09 - GM's Section If this section feels rushed, it's not - it's just there's alot of good advice here, but it's quite hard to get across without writing it out in entirity.  Running the Game To start off (after that opening blurb), we get the usual 'first time running a game' tips, which is pretty good here; not just concerned with world-building, it also talks about how to arrange games and what everyone should have to hand - the little things that make the experience better. As Heart is a narrative game, it also talks about controlling the pacing and energy of play - players have a lot of agency, and the GM's responsibility is to guide it and make sure the narrative flows smoothly. Then we get into the full list of general tips. After the general tips, the section has a section for first time story game GMs - as Heart is very much a narrative experience, rather than any kind of simulation. In short; details aren't too important; they only matter when they come in contact with the narrative, and the GM is responsible for working out how the world reacts to the players, rather than being the arbiter of a simulation. Also, importantly, don't plan too much - you don't want too much friction between what you think should happen, and what the players actually do.  An example of how to adjudicate failed rolls Finally, we get into advice specific to Heart. In general, you should start with some idea of the framing for the campaign - the default setting is a ragtag group of explorers, but there's several other suggestions; setting up a City Below trading company, defending a Haven, intelligences agents burnt by their handlers (this last one will be feature in one of the upcoming sourcebooks). But the key thing is to give the player's actions weight - if they do something, the world should react and quite possibly change as a result. In play, as a GM your job is to ask questions of the players - let them add flavour to the world around them, and generally give up any kind of firm control (it's easier that way - the GM is never really in control at the best of times; just roll with it). Also take a note of their answers - if there's little tidbits either you or the players come up with, keep them and re-use them; it makes the evocation of the world easier if there's a few familiar or remembered elements. Atmosphere in Heart is important; it's a horrific nightmare-place, but there's people - actual normal people - trying to make a living there; however tragic their lives are, they're alive, and it's possibly better than what it was before. The City Below is a terrifying, but wondrous place; the Heart isn't directly malevolant per se, and deep down you might wander through a parasite heaven, or an impossible three-dimensional turntable at the heart of the Vermissian. Things get strange down there. Tension in the game is also important - this is, essentially a horror game - but it's not something anyone can sustain. Let the players joke, let them break the tension every so often and use that as a contrast with the more distressing elements (and it should be noted, this game is fully up front about use of the X card, and Lines and Veils - there's quite a lot here which could be quite upsetting if it's sprung on players without warning). Fundementally, your job is to give players what they want. If they have a skill or a domain, let them use it. If the Vermissian Knight takes Dragon Killer then give them something big and nasty to kill. The players' Callings and the Beats they choose are key here - when they're picking Beats at creation, or at the end of a session, these should be the heart of any planning for the next session - if they want to take Blood fallout, include a fight, if they need to claim a valuable resource, give them the opportunity to steal or otherwise acquire one. Zenith beats bear special mention, as these are the culmination of a character's arc; their redemption or downfall, and should provide a satisfying resolution (if they don't succumb to Critical fallout before then). Ideally players should have an idea of what Zenith beat and ability they're aiming towards after a few sessions; as a GM you should take this into account as you plot the campaign forwards. Characters aren't disposable in Heart, but they're not going to around for years of play; they're supposed to die or otherwise end. And the campaign shouldn't go on forever - the suggestion is about eight linked games (not sessions, I think, but think plotlines/adventures; it's a bit vague); after that it might be time to call time on the campaign, either for a break or a fresh start. The rest of the chapter is on general mechanical advice; NPC creation (give them distinct traits and mannerisms, steal from pop culture, don't be afraid to kill them off), Combat - adverseries and players should always have an out; pretty much no-one is going to be fighting to the death, and player should have plenty of information up front. Fights should be about something - the skill is Kill after all, and that infers some kind of stake - and consequences are often brutal. Landmarks and delves can (and should) be freely tweaked to fit the campaign - the list in the book are suggestions, not canon. Oh, and every GM is terrified of screwing up, but this is normal and might never go away, so try to have fun doing it. Next: The Setting (finally)
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Apr 23, 2020 08:56
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Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 2e: Thousand Thrones Epilogue They had been through an awful lot. From saving Talabheim and revealing the existence of the Skaven to the Empire at large, to destroying a two century old Chaos Champion they had no idea about, to killing the considerably fewer centuries old Chaos Champion they DID know about, the Thousand Crowns have done a great deal for the Empire and the cause of all who resist the monstrosities of the Old World. No-one would ever know about their battle with Ruprecht or the Black Witch; who would possibly believe them? 'We battled a terrible witch in her hellwomb full of spiders' sounds too unbelievable to even be a Felix Jaeger or Dietlef Sierck story. Their part in the salvation of Talabheim officially buried to prevent massive legal repercussions, they had made plenty of friends there all the same, and so it was the natural next destination for the heroes. The realization that the Witch had not promised power or other conventional Chaos trickery convinced the heroes they were correct to protect the boy Karl. All she had offered him was a life without the powers he had slowly realized he had, the ones that were making him miserable and making crazy people kill each other over him. A life with a mother and a family and a house. Between Katarine and Syphan's magic, and the team's considerable abilities as veteran adventurers, the next year or so was consumed with discovering a way to give the boy what he had wished, a ritual that could suppress such supernatural charisma. After all, who knows when the Empire will face someone with the same powers but considerably more ill intent than a lonely ten year old boy who just wants safety and friends? It may have taken several adventures gathering all manner of insane magical ingredients (talking a dragon into letting them pull a tooth was probably the hardest part) but when it was over, they had given the boy what Chaos could not, and knew a path to destroy any such compulsion aura in other enemies the world may face some day. Selling the knowledge of the Rite of the Silenced King to the Colleges of Magic finally made them exactly one thousand crowns, too. The original purpose of their fellowship ended (making one thousand crowns, collectively), the heroes moved on in life, as people do. Katarine Schmidt retired earlier than many of her new friends from a life of adventure. She had an adoptive son to take care of, after all. She and Karl moved to Hochland, where she became a parish priestess of Rhya near the capitol of Hergig. Katarine split her time between rebuilding the devastated province, tending to the harvests and the marriages of the citizens, and taking care of her adoptive son. She would eventually find a much healthier marriage than the one she'd left to join the Thousand Crowns, settling down with a failed university student who had found work as a schoolmaster. She rarely took up the sacred longbow or the call of adventure again, preferring to spend the rest of her life in peace as a doctor, a priestess, a mother, and a healer of the land. Sometimes one epic adventure is enough in life. Her old friends are always welcome in her home. She was also pleased to see her eldest son eventually begin to heal from the trauma of being involved in death march crusades, vampire battles, and spider witch hell wombs, with Karl eventually finding a calling as an Initiate of Shallya. He wanted to follow in his mother's footsteps and do what he could to heal the sort of pain he'd seen as a boy. Shanna Applebottom had never really found what she wanted in the world of very serious people, but she kept at it. Adventure had saved the world and showed her she could be a heck of a leader if she wanted to, so she got out of adventure and crime and into the one Very Serious Realm she had not yet tried: Politics. Never returning to the Moot, Shanna instead moved to Altdorf and worked tirelessly to find a post in the Imperial Bureaucracy, reasoning that maybe here she could find someplace where she could socialize some, quietly do math more, and maybe keep the books straight. It was not to be, as her aggressive drive for ordering and reforming would see her promoted over and over again, becoming the first Halfling to be appointed to the Imperial Privy Council since the chef of Ludwig the Fat. The prior Imperial Minister of the Household had been terribly aged and stressed by managing the post-Storm debt crisis, and when he retired, Shanna Applebottom was there, trying to make sure everything was in order. She never actually wanted the job, but someone else would have done it wrong. The halflings named one of the scholarships to the Imperial universities in her honor for accidentally advancing the political profile of the Moot's people. The occasional Very Serious halfling who wants to do serious mathematics can still attend Imperial universities on the Shanna Applebottom Scholarship for Mathematics. Johan Kleiner went straight back to Talabheim when the team's adventures were done. He had a job waiting for him with Elector Countess Elise, who remembered well that the heroes had saved her life during the sack of her city. She had many, many uses for a man of his many talents. Johan's role in keeping the Skaven from coming back to the city and protecting the government of Talabheim would never reach recorded history books; that's hardly the way of a professional in the field of intelligence. Many cult Magi would be surprised to find themselves arrested shortly after taking on an excellent new chef. Skaven would find a truly fabulous cheese dish they could hardly resist, only to find it laced with rat poison. Time and again, enemies of the city suffered curious accidents, with nobody there to witness them but a bunch of servants. Johan eventually retired a wealthy but obscure man, going on to finally fulfill his original dream and open his own restaurant. It enjoyed modest success, which is all he asked for. Asked about what he did before opening the Stag's Rest, he would simply tell patrons he 'sometimes cooked, but usually cleaned'. Oleg Balinson stayed on the road. His feet were always itching and there's always call for a dwarf who doesn't mind being out and about. He took up the mantle of a Holdseeker, looking for evidence of the lost remnants of the old Dwarven Empire. His adventures led him all through the Empire and beyond, often crossing paths with his old friends and sometimes pulling them along for another crazy venture into a goblin-filled hellhole or Skaven-infested tunnel. When that grew too familiar for him, he traveled to Karak Barr and took up a career on their steamships, sailing to the New World to explore further, before coming back to his familiar haunts. He is currently planning expeditions into the Southlands and Araby, and the lands of Khemri. All of this is naturally for the good of his hold and the dwarven people, not simply because he really likes traveling and seeing new places. He brought Syphan several barrels of New World tree-sap syrup from one of his adventures the last time he saw her. It is considered one of the greatest gifts an elf has received from a dwarf since Bel Shanaar was gifted the first barrel of the strongest possible dwarven beer. Syphan of Naggarond eventually told her friends where she was actually from. Nobody actually cared that much by that point. They'd been through a hellwomb together, it was clear what side of things she was on. With the wisdom granted by being lectured at by a tiny magical raccoon, she slowly realized she was not actually some kind of secret master of High Magic as she had thought. Her power had grown considerably by doing things her own way, however, so she decided to continue on the road she'd taken so far. She never settled down, always wandering from place to place, occasionally visiting her old friends to help them with any of their new problems and sometimes taking on apprentices from among Imperial hedge wizards and witches. She sought to teach other mages how to master the mind and body through a regimen of martial arts and punching vampires in their smug faces, founding her own small tradition of mystical warriors. Most of her apprentices lacked her sheer drive and her natural talent for punching, and most ended up going to the normal colleges after learning the basics from her. Still, she's left an accidental mark on a few Imperial collegiate graduates, who go on to teach their own students that being able to throw a punch is an important part of understanding the nature of magic. She's really happy Oleg gave her that syrup. She is currently trying to learn Life Magic solely to be able to create it herself from the trees, a venture that is going to kill at least one Vampire Lord and probably destroy at least one Glade Lord of the Athel Loren. Sif Gundredsdottir never found the piles of gold her father did with her party. She suspected he just got lucky and framed his extraordinary experiences as a piece of solid advice for all adventurers. Still, she'd made some good friends, found good wargear, and learned an awful lot about beating the everloving poo poo out of evil. That done, she took the most direct approach she could find, making her way to and somehow robbing the Fortress of Brass that Archaon had retreated to. How she managed this alive and unmutated is unknown, though she certainly killed several Chaos Champions in duels and jacked their warbands. Having robbed an Everchosen, she returned to Norsca with her giant pile of extremely fulfilling gold, setting out to become a Queen. She founded the clan of the Isoltlings, a tribe that would forever have a tradition of female chiefs and rulers. Her great grandaughter, Eydis Falkisdottir, would go on to unite southern Norsca and throw off some of the shackles of Chaos, building the great city of Eydisheim about 80 years later. But that's another story. A very long story. Being as she'd founded a tribe in southern Norsca, she often had business trading in Marienburg and the Empire. Whenever possible, she would check on her old friends, and her Godson Karl. Most of the Old World never knew the deeds of Sif Gundredsdottir, but they never forgot. She eventually died in her sixties, mortally wounded after a great battle with a Chaos Dragon; she was able to get one last look at her enormous pile of gold, her loyal warriors, and her many daughters before she died, fulfilled. Rose the Raccoon is the smartest goddamn raccoon on the planet. She is still following Syphan around, lecturing her, trying to get her to get into the academic side of things. To date she has been mostly unsuccessful. Her hobbies include calculus, fishing for crawdads, washing things, and the study of international relations and advanced magical theory. Syphan would be lost without her. Literally, since the elf can't read a map to save her life. I hope you enjoyed Thousand Thrones. I had a great time coming up with a group of weirdos to bumble through it, and I think they did a good job of showing off why higher level WHFRP is a worthwhile experience and how the sense of progression can actually feel. Next, we're going to talk about how this plot could perhaps have been salvaged, before moving on to a new team and putting the poor people through Plundered Vaults and the Barony of the Damned Mini campaign. Their adventures will not suck nearly as much as the Thousand Crowns. Next Time: Fixing The Thousand Thrones
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Apr 23, 2020 13:59
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Night10194 posted:What the hell is the third? This thing is right in front of us, and I've heard of the Fallout one. How many of these loving things are there? One would almost lay money it's something 40K related.
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Apr 23, 2020 14:24
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Okay now that it's done, The name Shana Applebottom just reminds me of Barkley: Shut up and Jam: Gaiden.
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Apr 23, 2020 14:32
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Night10194 posted:Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 2e: Thousand Thrones Yaaay! I do like a happy ending!
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Apr 23, 2020 14:34
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Fivemarks posted:Okay now that it's done, The name Shana Applebottom just reminds me of Barkley: Shut up and Jam: Gaiden. Jesus, I just remembered what you mean here. Also my entire character concept for Sif was 'a woman whose life should have a soundtrack by Basil Poledouris.' I love me some Basil Poledouris.
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Apr 23, 2020 14:35
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That piece of fan fiction was so much better than anything on the published campaign, it should shame some hacks at GW to commit seppuku.
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Apr 23, 2020 14:56
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Johan's arc and life represents an impossible standard that any character I make will be unable to live up to.
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Apr 23, 2020 14:59
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Servant to Agent 47 is a completely natural and excellent career track. It's one of the many things that makes the Career system great. I can't take credit for 'sometimes cooked, often cleaned'. One of my friends suggested that line and it was perfect. I wish I'd thought of it.
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Apr 23, 2020 15:02
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I'm going to miss that merry band. Thank you, Night10194.
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Apr 23, 2020 15:55
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 The Welves will shut up and forgive Syphan when the first crop of maple syrup comes to fruition.
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Apr 23, 2020 16:16
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Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 2e: Thousand Thrones What Went Wrong So the Thousand Thrones is not a good campaign. It's railroaded to hell, has tons of chapters where nothing happens, has very wonky balance, and ends in a huge dungeon crawl full of BS against a foe that the PCs don't really have a lot of cause to care about. Yes, they save the world in the end, but a very 'dodge the falling knife' or 'treading water' sort of saving the world against a black space witch from nowhere isn't particularly satisfying; taking the stakes right up to THE VERY WORLD AT STAKE with a villain who has to have a Hall of Hasty Backstory to tell the PCs who the gently caress they're dealing with in the room before the final boss rings hollow. The Vampires are poorly integrated into the plot and waste both the vampires themselves and a lot of time on Deep Lore that probably doesn't matter to the PCs and doesn't actually matter to the story since it's all them being duped. The Crusade of the Child has some interesting potential but is completely wasted because it's viewed more as a means to drag the players around and walk from place to place as any sort of entity in the story. What does the Crusade do during the campaign? They forage off the land a little, get some people killed, travel around to major landmarks and camp outside of them, and then all die or give up off screen. They never matter. To some extent this is not the authors' faults. I have to be fair. Seeing that the vampires were added to the story on dictates from above halfway through the campaign's development does a lot to excuse how badly used the vampires are. Similarly, having 8 different authors with one cowriter/editor having a heavy enough hand to get his name put into the writing credits on half the scenarios while also writing his own scenario and overseeing all development of the campaign was always going to be a mess. Most of the scenarios are barely connected and the Crusade has to serve as 'glue' because there's a bunch of different visions pulling at things. The same thing hurt Paths of the Damned, especially because Schwalb is not a very good fiction writer or adventure writer to begin with. Having him write the climax of both big narrative campaigns (and having him be the driving force for Thousand Thrones) was not good. But everything being a mess is as much a result of 'tons of authors' as 'any one author is good or bad'. Dan White's scenario with the passion play was great! It's the only one I genuinely had fun reading and writing up. But it's one scenario. The multiple authors thing and the demands from above don't just muddle the scenario, they muddle the book. Tons of the information in this book is very...GM-only. Only the GM knows it and there's little on how to convey it to the players. The Deepest Lore horseshit in Chapter 7 is so boring not just because it's all a red herring but because it presupposes the PCs will play along with the DaVinci Code stuff which they have no real reason to do; they'd have to be visiting random temples to look at frescoes during their long coach trip to really get into it at all. If the scenario is totally unaffected by the players not bothering, something should be cut from the scenario. Similar, with so many authors, the book struggles with too many villains. Trying to have Ruprecht, The Black Witch, AND a Vampire of every Bloodline is too much. It leaves no time to focus on specific villains and build a connection. Look at Leibnitz in Ashes of Middenheim. He's got his issues (lack of motive, Knightfight, the fact that he mostly just decides to gently caress up) but by the time PCs get their hands on that fucker they want him dead. He has hosed them personally twice, refusing to pay them and then betraying the poo poo out of them. He's a smarmy, confident rear end in a top hat who uses his position well to protect himself and infuriate the players, and the heroes do actually get to confront him and gently caress him up after sufficient buildup. When my players played that adventure, they were happy to shoot that fucker in the throat with a crossbow. The Black Witch has no presence in this story. She isn't even introduced until very late. She could basically be cut and Ruprecht made the main villain and nothing would be lost besides the Hell Womb dungeon. Similar, Ruprecht gets the start of a good character, though I'd have made him Tzeentch. A young prodigy of magic who was deeply wronged by his rear end in a top hat father, beaten and kicked when he tried to do the right thing, and who fell into vicious black magic because of his father's evil smuggled goods? Who then went and exacted disproportionate revenge on his dad, and then also ruined his brother and his brother's family, who had never done anything to him, and murdered his own mother? Good, you've got an actual motive, a fall, a reason someone walked too far into darkness and became a crazy dark sorcerer. But he never gets the development he needs either, partly because his character dungeon is too dull and doesn't have much environmental storytelling rather than strict exposition, but partly because he gets shoved out of the way for the Black Witch. A vampire interested in all of this might've made a good side villain as a break from Chaos and Sigmarism. But I would have focused a campaign on the Crusade, and had Tzeentch Ruprecht be trying to take control of it and set up a 'win-win' situation. Either he gets Karl as a puppet, or Karl is the puppet of crazy Sigmarites who cause chaos in the Empire and the Cult and who enable Johan Esmer to be Anti-Theoganist. Esmer should have been a major villain. Esmer's been set up as a major campaign villain in multiple sourcebooks. A Sigmarite Monodominant being a tool of Chaos without ever being a Chaos Cultist because he's a selfish, greedy, bigotted rear end in a top hat would have been awesome! If you need more villainous dimensions, maybe add a second cult that's interested in snatching Karl to study instead of all this planning. But you need fewer villains and more focus on them, and the Witch is honestly the easiest villain to cut. Why does the Witch suck, and if you were intent on fixing her, what would you do? I've hammered it over and over. She doesn't really have a character, but she also doesn't even have a gimmick! She never sends minions against the party to tell you her character as a villain, she never talks to them outside of some vague dream sendings if you're on the 'winning' path, everything about her comes out of left field. Your villain can get away with being a little shallow or cliche if they at least have a gimmick that's memorable. But she's got a hook they do nothing with; she's a product of the destruction of Praag and a former Hag. You can work with that to make a real villain. A redone Black Witch wouldn't have a hell-womb, she'd have a lair hidden inside the dark parts of Praag no-one goes to because they're too hot. She's the legacy of the tragedy of Praag, goddamnit, set your final chapter in Praag. It's a cool city. Give her an actual reason she surrendered rather than died; maybe she always felt a call to power, maybe she resented having to bargain with spirits and be spit on by Gospodar. Maybe she was a person sick of asking and now she can take. Anything. It doesn't have to be super deep, she just needs a reason she said yes when darkness called; Ruprecht has that, at least. Give her a gimmick; my idea would be that she actually keeps her bargains. If you deal with the Black Witch of Praag, you get what you asked for and give what she asked from you. She gets the better of the deals, but they don't all just destroy her bargainers. Make her a dark(er) reflection of the Wise Woman of the Woods. Keep the bit where she's promising Karl a normal life, but make her mean it. She won't kill him. Why should she? If he comes before her and offers all that makes him special, she'll be happy to take it away. Even set him up with a loving mother and a happy family. In return for empowering her with his Aura instead. The Aura alone is something you don't want a terrifying hell witch getting! Her being in a hotzone in Praag would also give you a chance to characterize the final dungeon by reflecting on how badly Praag got hosed. Give the PCs some insufficient protective equipment and a warning that they can only be in there for X number of hours, and after Y they'll be at risk of mutation and sickness. Send them into the goddamn Exclusion Zone. A time limit they actually know about and a situation where they feel they have to press on anyway is much more dramatic. The reason none of this is done, though, is because one of the other core sicknesses of Thousand Thrones is how mean-spirited and cruel it is. Take Hannah's death. Hannah could have just hung herself. A character with no support structures, deeply depressed, feeling hugely guilty, might succumb to suicidal ideation. But having her fail, then slowly bleed out while begging for help unnoticed? The gently caress does that add besides 'someone thinks it's cool that there's lots of extra suffering'. Warhammer is often a black comedy setting, but that kind of thing goes well beyond comedy and into just pointless mean-spirited cruelty. Which also makes it a story that is too busy reveling in butchery and suffering (and a lot of brutality specifically to women, which is something we'll be seeing more of in Plundered Vaults and something the line's adventures should be dinged for) to even remember any of this is tragic. If you don't consider the pain and loss to be anything but a fun bit of splatterhouse comedy, you can't get a somber trip into a hellish exclusion zone built from the tragedy of a great city as a final dungeon. You just get more poo poo and gore in a hellwomb. Who the gently caress writes the whole Katarine encounter in the original? Or the mutants who help you, show they're ordinary people, and then get shot to death/abandoned to die no matter what you do. Sure, grim, perilous, blah blah, but at a certain point it just feels pointlessly mean and will make players stop engaging. Also, on a mechanical/gameplay level, Schwalb's dungeon design is actually very simple to figure out. 'Challenge' dungeons usually are, their designers usually have patterns. The one here is that you shouldn't touch or engage with anything. Which is the most boring possible way to do 'challenge'. Anything you engage with that you don't have to just hurts you, and almost never has treasure, clues, or rewards. There's no risk-reward in these delves. Take the Hatchery of the spiders. Your only real good option is to back off, do nothing, and never learn what her plan is. Touching them in any way hurts you and the world. There's no option to find a way to destroy them or thwart the plan, you just close your eyes, back away, and keep swinging. The right solution is always doing as little as possible and not engaging. As it has been since Tomb of Corruption. His personal taste for mutation is also potentially ruinous to a campaign, because mutations that render a PC unplayable are very, very common, especially if you use the beloved d1000 table in ToC. You can spend Fate to avoid a mutation, sure, but that's a temporary solution at best. The issue is that mutation can effectively wipe you out in one bad roll. Combat is pretty unlikely to do that. It takes a fair bit to die in combat, especially late in a WHFRP campaign. There are more decisions you can make to avoid it, too. The writer really enjoying mutation can derail things a lot because the chances you turn inside out or otherwise get something you cannot possibly hide are very high and effectively cause Fate burns if your GM even lets you spend Fate to stop them. There's a difference between 'the PCs are heroes, who may be marked by mutation and may have touched dark things that heroes officially don't touch' and 'roll a save or die'. The former is thematic, the latter is what happens in practice. 2e dearly needed some kind of gauge on mutation rather than it being binary checks, and Schwalb's personal taste for it hurts the balance of his scenarios. It mostly comes up in the ones he writes. And the BS bit about 'any PC with a mutation feels the Call to come north and goes and becomes a Chaos Warrior' undercuts the really neat theming on Mutation and the Empire being wrong about it. So yeah. Thousand Thrones is a mean spirited mess. You could get a decent campaign out of the hook (a magical child being used by people around him, whose greed and viciousness is reflected despite their supposed 'devotion' to him) but you'd need to toss out a lot and focus down on a couple villains. It's probably not worth doing. As I said in the beginning: Do not expose Thousand Thrones directly to face. See you all in Plundered Vaults! The End
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Apr 23, 2020 16:49
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What always puzzles me about GW systems is how highly lethal / character-destroying their systems are on top of how involved character gen / upgrade is. WH40k is pretty much rocket tag, WHF has completely ruinous mutations. I feel like the more likely your character gets taken out of play, the simpler the character gen should be.
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Apr 23, 2020 17:37
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The thing about WHFRP2e is that in my experience it actually isn't that lethal. Mutation stands out as an outlier when it comes up often, but it doesn't actually come up that often and there are usually ways to avoid it when it does. It's what makes the lovely final dungeon and Schwalb's total love of it (and other save or dies in ToC) puzzling. Most of the game, you get some slack and leeway and opportunities to survive. And when those are bolstered by Fate giving you extra lives... The other thing is that apparently the designer-preferred way to play, which is not well telegraphed, is for players to both burn and earn Fate reasonably often. While my GM and I (when I'm GMing) prefer to balance situations so that PCs don't have to Burn Fate much but also hand it out very sparingly. Fate is the main adjustment to the lethality of the game, as is the fact that 2nd and 3rd tier PCs are pretty drat competent heroes who can handle most situations outside of being forced to make potentially save-or-die tests more than five times in one day (meaning no recharging Fortune) and every time they take any wounds. The Hellwomb is unusual for the level of mutagenic horseshit in it. The Big Gun in TiT could be eliminated without anyone risking Mutation if you blew it up by rolling a bomb at it with a lit fuse, etc. Thousand Thrones' love of mutation checks is well above the norm. Mutation in general (and Insanity, which apparently takes out more PCs than any other source in long-running games that use it) is an outlier compared to the normal lethality of reasonably balanced combat, exploration, and roguery. E: Also, WHFRP's character generation is very quick, it's the development and EXP that can take some time. I can make a 1st tier starting PC in about 5 minutes, though I have a huge amount of experience doing so so that's probably a bit outside the norm. 40k takes much longer. One of the reasons the advancement system gets the praise it does is the majority of PCs will live long enough to meaningfully interact with it despite appearances. Night10194 fucked around with this message at 17:48 on Apr 23, 2020 |
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Apr 23, 2020 17:46
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I have similar opinions about Call of Cthulhu, but I'm told that chargen is very quick when you're familiar with it... which really doesn't help much when you're not.
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Apr 23, 2020 17:53
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Bieeanshee posted:I have similar opinions about Call of Cthulhu, but I'm told that chargen is very quick when you're familiar with it... which really doesn't help much when you're not. Any system with TWOOO LEEEEEEGGGS is, by definition, not a good system.
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Apr 23, 2020 17:59
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Robindaybird posted:What always puzzles me about GW systems is how highly lethal / character-destroying their systems are on top of how involved character gen / upgrade is. Speaking as a GM (or at least would-be GM as I'm between games right now), leaving aside fairness to players, I don't want to kill off or mutate players because I don't want to spend one-two hours during my four hours of gaming a week to loving roll up new characters all the time. And assuming you're sane, you'll have a kind of "conservation of XP" with characters because there's no point in bring in a "Level 1" newbie to join a bunch of "12th levelers" and be a blood squib in the first encounter. If everyone else is rocking 3000 XP characters, then then newbie will be at that level or maybe at 2800 or so. And 2800 XP takes a little time to spend and figure out. As a "mean GM" I might hurt your character, or embarrass him or steal his cool poo poo, but I'm not going to go out of my way to kill him or otherwise make him unplayable because I don't want to have to spend the time and work needed to help you build a replacement.
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Apr 23, 2020 18:35
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I'm surprised you didn't mention Neiglish Rot in that teardown.  Given the roller coaster of 2E adventures, I'd be interested to see an assessment of 4E's printed adventures. Hopefully C7 have learned the lesson that GW didn't?
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Apr 23, 2020 18:46
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As the current pandemic illustrates there's absolutely no need for a 100% deadly and quick acting disease just to make things grimmer. Neglish Rot probably works best as something that most healers will never encounter in their career.
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Apr 23, 2020 18:55
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By popular demand posted:As the current pandemic illustrates there's absolutely no need for a 100% deadly and quick acting disease just to make things grimmer. It's not something that should kill you easily, either. You just get sicker and sicker and suffer more until Nurgle breaks you down or you fight it off.
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Apr 23, 2020 18:57
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remember that as far as Papa Nurgle is concerned this is just about his most thoughtful and well crafted present ever, if the GM just spreads it around the campaign that greatly cheapens the gift. So keep it for special occasions and special people.
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Apr 23, 2020 19:09
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Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 2e: Plundered Vaults A Series of Unfortunate Events So this book is one of the few I have a physical copy of. I got it from a friend's gaming store when he had a bunch of the old WHFRP2e books he couldn't move and decided to sell them for like 70% off. I knew one of my friends liked playing Skaven and said the setting was pretty good, I liked Dark Heresy, and so what the heck, I picked up the bundle. This book contains a couple adventures that almost convinced me not to bother trying running or playing the game. There's nothing in here as bad as Thousand Thrones (though there are two separate 'unavoidable brutality to women' scenarios!) but something about the smug and triumphal 'oh by the way, all the help you thought you were getting someone? This isn't a fairy tale, they die hideously and everyone is miserable' aside in the end of one of the adventures just immediately turned me off to such a degree that I almost didn't bother with the system, setting, or anything. Considering WHFRP is one of my favorite RPGs, that's quite a shame. Like with Thousand Thrones, there will be a 'canon party'. This is a series of unrelated one-shot adventures, though, all for characters in their early to mid to late 1st career. This means they're well beneath the Thousand Crowns or Brute Squad, despite the continual suggestions these adventures could be used to 'grind' PCs to higher levels and fill time/take a break during Paths of the Damned and Thousand Thrones. So instead, we'll have a fresh group of five adventurers to take them on. First up on the team is Karl Schmidt, now age 18 and no longer a magic child. His ending was specifically because I planned to use a depowered Karl for this anyway, and he rolled Initiate for one of his Careers, so hey. Initiate of Shallya Karl. quote:Name: Karl Schmidt Karl Schmidt has seen some poo poo, literally and figuratively. Nine years have passed since the end of the horrific events that revolved around his unwanted powers, nine years of trying to recover from having witnessed hell wombs, insane religious crusades, and feeling deeply responsible for the deaths of dozens of people regardless of what his adoptive parents told him. The repeated kidnappings and being forced to ride in a coffin by Nurglites didn't help, either. Armed with a profound hatred for Nurgle and a strong sense of guilt, Karl has sought shelter in the faith of Shallya, the Goddess of Healing and Mercy. He's grown up into a strong, handsome young man with a surprisingly keen mind and an appetite for learning. He shares his adoptive mother's aptitude for medicine, and like many young male Shallyans, he's been sent out on pilgrimage to be a traveling doctor to try to keep down the number of medical soap operas that happen within Shallyan temples. Karl is a little shy around crowds (with good reason), but friendly and good with people, and he hopes his time on the road will help him save a few lives and quiet the pangs of guilt. He owes it to mercy after how much it was shown to him. He's not happy to have to explain his chest brand any time someone sees him bare chested, though. Goddamn cultists burning a twin tailed comet into him to make him a false savior, it's made being a Shallyan pretty awkward sometimes. Karl is a medic and social character. Sadly, these characters won't get far enough for his Divine Lore to come into play, but every team needs someone with Heal and Shallyan Initiates start with Heal+10. Karl's good with people (which might or might not be a surprise) and physically pretty buff, though he won't be wielding a weapon unless it's a total emergency or they're up against Nurgle. He takes his vows seriously. Still, a guy who's good at healing, who can read and write (no-one else in this team can!) and who's a good talker is enough for him to be worthwhile. Karl does his best. Katarine is proud of him. Next up is Sir Gilbert d'Bastonne, a furious warrior who is exactly who he appears to be. quote:Name: Gilbert d’Bastonne Gilbert d'Bastonne is a noble, kind-hearted, and brave knight of Bretonnia, 16 summers old and already prepared to show he is the flower of Breton chivalry. A young Errant is the greatest joy any maiden or peasant in danger could ever encounter, for he shall stop at nothing to prove himself an honorable knight! If only he hadn't gotten lost and ended up in the Empire. And then gotten lost again going to Nuln. And somehow ended up in Sylvania, which almost went very badly. Well, it doesn't really matter where he ends up, wherever he goes the world seems in need of a righteous sword arm that will bring the Lady's grace and the protection of a Knight of Bretonnia to the people! He has rather forgotten that his deeds need to be witnessed for them to count towards his eventual enfiefment, but his heart is in the right place. Gilbert is continually annoyed by how Imperials think he's probably a woman, a peasant, a foreigner, or all three. Do they never encounter actual noble sons of Bretonnia in this benighted land!? Or is this merely how they assuage the sting of knowing that their 'knights' will never equal the Lady's champions? Regardless, the young healer boy can read a map fairly well, and the Estalian knows how not to get pickpocketed so often, so...perhaps he will stick with them. Perhaps they will be his boon companions in foreign lands and his fellowship will elevate them by example. For Bretonnia! For the Lady! Gilbert is a subversion of expectations in that he's a dumb, lucky, good-hearted Bretonnian Knight who can't tell a lie to save his life, who is actually of noble blood, who is actually biologically male. He is a furious dumbass who means well in all things, and he's really good with a sword and started with Sturdy. You could ask for worse in your party. He's completely oblivious to traps, totally non-streetwise, and basically being led along by the nose by his friends, but when the time comes to do deeds, he's ready! He's comic relief, but he's quite dangerous comic relief! Next up is Elena Santiago, Estlian Bounty Huntress quote:Name: Elena Santiago Elena used to be a Picador, throwing javelins and annoying bulls in Estalia's famous bullfights. She tried to make the transition to a fighter herself, but lacked the flair to be a true entertainer. While she's an excitable and passionate woman, she could never put together a proper persona for the ring. While drinking away her cares from a failed audition, she recognized a wanted man, an illegal duelist who had killed a man outside of all bounds of legitimate vendetta. Needing money, and a little drunk, she figured her bullwhip could do just as good of a job at apprehending a fugitive as it did at annoying bulls. She turned out to be right, and now she's a Bounty Hunter. She also caused a vendetta with the captured man's family, and as things go in Estalia, decided to head up north to see the sights, pick up some work, and avoid the large numbers of highly skilled noble duelists that might try to kill her for shaming their cousin by beating the poo poo out of him with a bullwhip. Needing friends in the Empire, she's fallen in with a cute Shallyan Initiate and the clueless knight following him around; they'll attract targets, make noise, and hey, they're trustworthy company. What else can you ask for in the bounty hunting business? Elena is a Bounty Hunter. They're basically ranger-rogues, who are also decent fighters. She can wield a sword and dagger pretty well, but her secret weapon is Entangling. Her bullwhip is quietly awesome as hell; she can whip out and Snare someone with it, and if they fail Agi, they're caught (while taking chip damage of SB-4) and have to spend their turns trying to break the grapple. Meanwhile, all allies get +20% to hit them and they can't Dodge or Parry! It has unlimited ammo, she can use it up close or far away (6m range), just once she's snared someone she has to draw her sword in the other hand, and she could really use Ambidextrous but doesn't have it. Yes, this class goes right into Vampire Hunter; a whip is great for them too. She's also good with a crossbow and okay in the woods or at scaring people. Next up is Vendrick Roseblossom, Asrai Kithbander quote:Name: Vendrick Roseblossom Vendrick is a mighty warrior of the Asrai Glade Guard, a soldier of peerless skill who far surpasses any lumberfoot or mayfly warrior in all ways. As long as nobody gets him in hand to hand. He claims to have spent decades mastering his beautiful heartwood bow, not mentioning it's a mass produced standard issue militia weapon (not that it isn't a heck of a bow). This is technically correct, since Vendrick is 35 years old and has been practicing with his bow since he was 15. Vendrick has been sent out from his Glades on a secret mission, to ascertain the success or failure of the Rite of the Silenced King. If it succeeded, he is to bring the boy Karl back to Queen Ariel for study. Or so his superiors said. They know the human ritual worked, they know the boy is powerless, and they figure this will get the eager-beaver would-be hero of the Glade out of their hair for a decade or so while he follows Karl around to make sure he isn't special. Vendrick is the kind of young soldier who is in it for love of country and queen, who volunteers for every poo poo duty because he's trying so hard to get ahead. He hates the human world (or so he says), complaining loudly about almost everything, and is a little annoyed he can't seem to get a rise out of the Shallyan. The company accepts him, though; he really is great with a bow, and that same eager attitude means he'll constantly take on dangerous duties as an adventurer. He might be annoying, but he's useful and extremely dedicated. Man, this team is ranger-heavy. Vendrick is exactly what you expect out out of a Wood Elf. He's awesome with a bow, he falls apart in melee, he starts with the best Longbow which is already the best ranged Prof in the game, he's got a good wide selection of Ranger skills, and good exits. He's kind of annoying and may have listened to Right Wing Tree Talk Radio a little much, but he's earnest as hell. He'd bristle enormously if anyone told him he kind of resembles the Bretonnian. Next up, Ulrike Steiner, who has the most bullshit stat set I've ever rolled for a WHFRP character ever, the Squire of the White Wolf quote:Name: Ulrike Steiner Ulrike Steiner is the ideal Squire of the Knights of the White Wolf. She has not yet attained her spurs, but has already slain a minotaur in single combat, rescued numerous citizens of the Empire, and been an example to her fellow Squires. Too much of an example. Frankly, she was making a lot of them look bad. Some of them from very connected families. Her superiors learned of multiple plots to discredit, kill, or otherwise shame her for her exceptional talent and devotion to Ulric, and decided they'd send her into the countryside on 'errantry' to finish proving her spurs. That should keep her from causing problems with unit cohesion. She's taken the assignment in stride, as she does everything; this is actually one of her main failings as an Ulrican, and her superiors are hoping she realizes that she should punch someone in the face and get mad about being screwed over like this once she gets frustrated out there. She is, at times, entirely too 'chill'. She's fallen in with a company of Adventurers, like you do when you're on your own, and she hopes to be an example to them, too. The Bretonnian won't stop sneaking shocked looks at her long, blonde hair and bare head. It's a little weird. Have you seen Hot Fuzz? With those stat rolls, Ulrike is basically Ulrican Nicholas Angel, sent to the countryside to stop making other people look bad by being such a goddamn awesome Squire. I have never seen a character with those kinds of base stats, which she made up for with minimum Wounds and Fate. Still, she's a crazy good warrior, has pretty good gear (but won't wear helmets. White Wolf), and Knight is a social as well as combat track, which takes advantage of her awesome Fel. They needed a pure straightwoman anyway. These five will be our heroes for all of Plundered Vaults, and then on to Barony of the Damned once they're early second tier. Get ready for sausage, a highly scripted farce, two (2) instances of unavoidable and horrific brutality specifically to young women, a gothic dungeon crawl, a haunted house, and a lot of wine. Also, flaming screaming skulls! It's related to the wine! Next Time: The Matter of Wine and Vengeance Night10194 fucked around with this message at 19:31 on Apr 23, 2020 |
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Apr 23, 2020 19:27
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Night10194 posted:The thing about WHFRP2e is that in my experience it actually isn't that lethal. Mutation stands out as an outlier when it comes up often, but it doesn't actually come up that often and there are usually ways to avoid it when it does. It's what makes the lovely final dungeon and Schwalb's total love of it (and other save or dies in ToC) puzzling. Most of the game, you get some slack and leeway and opportunities to survive. And when those are bolstered by Fate giving you extra lives... I remember listening to a review of Dark Heresy that criticized the Psychic Phenomena table since (if I remember right) its results were toothless fluff until you got halfway up Perils of the Warp and it becomes hilariously lethal and likely to kill you (it's been a while, so I'm probably not doing it justice).I remember thinking, as because that system was designed for investigation first instead of combat first like most popular systems; it's why you have so many skills for fine shades of social interaction and one that's just for taking and shaking off drugs.If you're going through somebody's files while trying to avoid the guards, the room suddenly smelling like rotten eggs is less a bit of flavor text and more a reason for the guard to swing by. It makes using powers a risky enough proposition that players hesitate before using them anyway, Which makes the Perils of the Warp table (which is actually extremely unlikely to reach) a threat instead of an inevitability. And then I realized that most players would rather run around and fight 'nids than trying to scam some drugged up noble. It doesn't matter what a system is designed for if its used for something else.
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Apr 23, 2020 21:48
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The thing is that ironically having a dozen different skills for individual bits of social interaction when you have the Basic/Advanced skill model from 2e (which I actually think is one of its mistakes compared to the other editions of WHFRP) doesn't actually put focus on investigation. It actually makes doing any kind of investigation much harder, compared to having a smaller, more easily accessed skillset for the job. Because of it you're very likely to have 'holes' and gaps in your team's abilities, because you're also at the mercy of a sprawling and pretty arbitrary version of the Career system and the variable costs of buying XYZ in it. Like the designated 'rogue' class, the Scum, not actually having the skills to do a breaking and entering for several levels. But then Dark Heresy just isn't a particularly well designed game. Night10194 fucked around with this message at 22:03 on Apr 23, 2020 |
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Apr 23, 2020 21:58
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Night10194 posted:But then Dark Heresy just isn't a particularly well designed game. Could be worse. Could be Adeptus Evangelion.
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Apr 23, 2020 23:02
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Night10194 posted:But then Dark Heresy just isn't a particularly well designed game. Alright, that's fair.
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Apr 23, 2020 23:39
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Night10194 posted:Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 2e: Plundered Vaults God save you, Night. You are credit to team. So did people just kind of assume that somewhere out there was a bog-standard fantasy adventure where the PCs help bail a hamlet out of its overwhelming problems that are nonetheless exactly as they seem? And then all go "well, that already exists out there somewhere, obviously, so let's change things up!"
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Apr 24, 2020 00:34
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It's the whole 'this is a grim world of perilous adventure, so you never manage to help anyone or get paid'. Barony of the Damned is pretty okay and a couple of the adventures here are fine. Just a few are quite bad. The upcoming one is a pretty decent bog-standard investigation mission that can be potentially extremely lucrative and actually makes a good first mission for a team.
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Apr 24, 2020 00:44
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I think in the minds of the people doing these adventures, the somewhere that "you actually succeed/get paid" exists is "playing D&D instead".
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Apr 24, 2020 00:53
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Basically 3 (4 maybe depending on how you feel about a highly scripted farce) of the adventures are fine, 2 are pretty terrible. The worst of the adventures is the one that they explicitly say is perfect for introducing new players to Warhammer and is the one that gave me such a bad impression I almost didn't bother. Heck, 2 of them I'd rate as good; the wine adventure is actually pretty good (even if it's pay is astonishing and a little nuts for 1st tiers, which is not a sentence I ever thought I'd write about a WHFRP published adventure) and the haunted castle is actually good too. So actually the team will be doing that one first. The terrible one.
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Apr 24, 2020 01:04
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Didn't one of the early WHFP adventures end with the PCs running a successful riverboat concern? (That was probably up in the next adventure.)
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Apr 24, 2020 01:15
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Zereth posted:I think in the minds of the people doing these adventures, the somewhere that "you actually succeed/get paid" exists is "playing D&D instead". A long time ago I ran a WHFRP game whose premise was that the characters are mercenaries just discharged from a far-off campaign and in session one they more or less crash their river boat into a sunken pirate ship filled with loot. They now have to get their Count of Monte Cristo levels of cash back to the empire where they can spend it. Unfortunately for them most of the loot is rare or not easily spendable goods so they have to find a way to actually turn it into cash as they go. The party was eventually murdered by orcs because I had a bunch of bad ideas and mismanaged it, but there you go.
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Apr 24, 2020 02:11
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The wine adventure is the first time I've ever seen an adventure I think is overpaying players. You even get paid either way depending on how you resolve it! E: I'll also be throwing in (with this same team) Karak Azgal, which is a curious little toolbox book about licensed dungeon-crawling in a recently recovered dwarven hold, with an actually kind of neat take on a Slaanesh cult: Evil dwarfs seduced by treasure hiding their heresy behind claiming they 'recovered record of' an Ancestor of Wealth they made up. And a Thing That Was Dug Too Greedily And Too Deep! Night10194 fucked around with this message at 03:37 on Apr 24, 2020 |
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Apr 24, 2020 02:13
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  This chapter gives the PCs one year of downtime between it and the resolution of the Battle of Mytros. The details are left vague, but the DM can draw from the existing Fame system as well as one of the Appendices which details what happens when/if a PC builds a new Order of Dragonlords. The destruction from the Titans’ fall left many refugees and scattered people, and various new settlements named themselves after various heroes who proved themselves during this time. Naturally several are named after the PCs, and there are perks for PCs who patronize and fund said settlements. The adventure begins when the nymph Ekoh approaches the party with a message. Narsus was once one of the new dragon-turned-gods, but like his brethren he lost that spark at the end of the Oath of Peace. Five hundred years ago he was kidnapped by an obsessed queen of Aresia, and he’s lived as a hostage-guest in said city ever since. Ekoh was once in a contest to win the hand of said god in marriage, but the Aresian Queen cheated her out of it and kidnapped Narsus. Not only that, Ekoh claims that Narsus learned of a means of allowing mortals to ascend to godhood themselves, and that such knowledge is dangerous in the hands of the Aresians while also implying that he’ll give said secrets to whoever frees him. Meeting with knowledgeable NPCs to confirm this story demonstrates that the claim is indeed from Narsus; he’s too prideful to lie about something like this, which...sounds kind of contradictory to me; arrogant people exaggerate and lie all the time! Aresia is on hostile terms with Mytros, and by extent Estoria, and the Dragonlords are not recognized as a legitimate organization in the city-state’s dominion. This makes the matter of just walking up to the city and asking for an audience unlikely. The adventure also implies that chaos will reign with the loss of the Five Gods and at least two of the Titans, but never goes into detail on the effects. Mytros and Thylea are still around, so it’s not a totally godless world even if the PCs killed Kentimane, Helios, and the twins Sydon and Lutheria. Does the world become a joyless, boring place without the Goddess of Music? Are timeshares and quack doctors making a killing without a replacement God(dess) of Wisdom? The adventure does not say. The PCs have two major means of dealing with Aresia: they can lead an army to besiege it Trojan War style, or they can infiltrate the city and find a means to rescue Narsus themselves. Negotiation with Queen Helen of Aresia is an option, but the party’s NPC allies will advise against it unless they use the threat of invasion as a big stick in any dealmaking. The adventure has a few open-ended results in however they proceed, although the siege by far has the most encounters. Instead of using a logistics mini-game in managing thousands of troops, the PCs have to accomplish several tasks during the war on a personal level in order to turn the tide in their army’s favor. In no particular order they must defeat a sapient bronze colossus named Talos defending the city; find and disable the artifact Palladium, which grants resistance against damage and advantage on attack rolls for Aresia’s walls and siege weapons respectively; and press the attack in several set-piece battles at the gates and bridges. There are also two times when the PCs will be approached by figures: the first is a siren messenger from the Queen who wishes to negotiate a ceasefire, and the second is the Shadowmaster who claims to be a servant of the Dragonlords and can help the PCs find the Palladium. The Shadowmaster is actually part of Lutheria’s cult, who still remains loyal to her even should she have been defeated by the heroes. They want to see Aresia fall for their own reasons...although you’d think that getting the PCs one step closer to divinity would make Lutheria’s job harder in the end. Oh well, I’ve learned not to expect any rational long-term plans from that weird sex cult. If the PCs approach Queen Helen at any point, her terms are surprisingly reasonable: Narsus used to give public appearances in Aresia to adoring fans, but ever since the loss of his divinity they had to put a stop to this along with a rather large loss in morale. She wants to see her city’s divine status symbol return to his old self, and doesn’t even mind the idea of the PCs as a new pantheon, provided they promise not to “steal him away” from her. The PCs can also find Narsus hidden in an underground chamber beneath one of the Aresian warrior-temples. The former god is here in bronze dragon form, happy that the PCs got his message. He was true about the godhood ritual, but he has no desire to leave Aresia whether for Ekoh or anyone else as all his needs are taken care of and he’s a local celebrity. If the PCs led a siege against the city, he’s entirely nonplussed about the devastation and loss of life, despite Aresia being his home for half a millenium. This part of the adventure is a very large weak point. Although the grisly specifics are not mentioned, the Aresian siege results in suffering and death for the civilian population as well, and ironically the suggestions by pretty much every NPC advisor results in options that are worse in the long-term. Queen Helen’s demands are surprisingly reasonable and as such the PCs don’t really need to budge or renegotiate on any major matters. Chances are that if the party led a siege, they may feel more than a bit angered at Narsus’ callousness and deception and conclude that such a self-centered god should not have power over mortals. Compound this with the fact that it was one chapter ago that the party saw the effects of an invasion on the defending side, and the whole “we gotta invade ‘em!” encouragement from their allies may result in a loss of respect and trust. Whether gaining an attendance by force or by word, Narus tells the PCs that they need 3 artifacts in order to perform the godhood ritual: the Caduceus, buried in the cairns of Aresia’s first King who is now a vampire; the Ambrosia, which has come into the hands of a minotaur warlord building up a personal army; and the Promethean Fire, which lies within the submerged former capital of the Siren race. The artifact hunt can be done in any order, although the Promethean Fire is much longer and covered in detail in the next chapter. If the PCs negotiated a peace treaty, then dealing with the vampire king and minotaur warlord are part of their end of the bargain in ensuring Aresia’s safety. The City of Aresia  Aresia has a write-up much like Estoria and Mytros, although not to the latter’s extensive level of detail. We have a discussion of its political factions, a brief history, magic item shops, and random encounters and rumors. Sadly much of this will not be relevant during the siege, given that most of the location entries presume the PCs are infiltrating or that the city is not in the middle of war. There’s 21 location write-ups, but to sum up the place in broad strokes… 1. It’s Fantasy Counterpart Sparta. There’s still a civilian class, but pretty much everyone in power is some kind of warrior. 2. Said Spartan warriors are Monks, and every 5th Edition monk subclass in the core rulebook (and a few from Unearthed Arcana and supplements, like Way of Tranquility and a renamed Kensei via Way of the Sword) are represented here. They have a bit of a “rival fighting schools” theme where they compete against each other in tournaments. The Way of Shadow monks are a secret Lutherian cult, while the Way of Elements monks are like Avatar’s benders in that they use their talents for public works in addition to warfare. 3. Queen Helen hand-selects warrior-monks to serve as bodyguards. But she thinks with her vagina and chooses handsome young men over experienced veterans. Said bodyguards have to be abstinent in all other relationships besides those with her. 4. There’s a Sidequest where a woman is in love with one of the senior warriors, but he does not feel worthy of marrying her unless his mithral sword is recovered. Said sword is possessed by the minotaur warlord Zakroth, and the PCs can resolve this love affair by bringing it back. 5. Minotaurs have equal rights here, unlike much of Thylea. Aresia looks down on the rest of the continent for their barbaric practice of enslaving them. 6. Aresia grows the best olives in all of Thylea, and certain high-quality olive oil varieties mixed into potions can give 1 bonus die type to rolls granted by said potion. There’s also a more generic magic item shop run by a philosopher-wizard whose wares are stored in a bag of holding. 7. The Red Lotus restaurant has various NPCs and a bartender who can update the party on interesting goings-on. 8. PCs can get funding for an underwater expedition to the siren city by a merchant house who can give them magic scrolls for deep-sea survival, mundane ships, and sailors in exchange for 10% proceeds of treasure recovered. Zakroth’s Prison Fort  The Ambrosia is a drinkable container that enchants whatever liquid is put in it. It raises the user’s Charisma with every drink while also de-aging them to a minimum of 13 years or early adolescence for non-humans. Given that Zakroth has possessed this artifact for a while, this must mean he’s the most well-spoken and inspiring kid in all of Thylea. Zakroth served faithfully under Sydon, and although his patron is most likely dead he still wishes to take revenge on the settler races. He’s built up a coalition of centaurs, minotaurs, and even gigantes (who are ugly and antisocial giants) under a unified banner where they intend to make Aresia an example for the start of their war. The fort is a 10 room, 4 level dungeon inside a multi-level treehouse. It would ordinarily be a straightforward crawl save for 2 interesting role-play-worthy encounters: the first one is a group of Maenad cooks will claim that Lutheria still lives (“you cannot kill death”) and that she is angry with the party while taunting them as a premonition of things to come. The other one involves the most powerful centaur chieftains giving their sons and daughters as guest-hostages to Zakroth as a gesture of trust and to ensure the unification of their alliance. Depending on how the PCs handle the hostages, they may determine how the various tribes treat the PCs’ political legacy. Peace between the native and settler races within the party’s lifetime is based on this. Tomb of Karpathos  Karpathos was Aresia’s first and only king, and also had the unique title of Thylea’s first and only known vampire after breaking an oath to Lutheria. His own daughter sealed him and his brood in a barrow-mound, which is still watched over to this day by an honor guard of Aresian warriors. The Caduceus can be found in this mound. In the hands of a living creature it can grant powerful healing magic, but in the hands of an undead or a friend it can create powerful undead. Karpathos has been using the artifact to make more vampire spawn, but given that they cannot leave the tomb’s boundaries due to magical wards (Forbiddance and Antipathy/Sympathy in case the PCs wish to dispel it) his army is rather self-contained. The tomb is a 14 room dungeon with branching pathways, and is rather underwhelming. A fair amount of the encounters are vampire spawn trapped under millstones, and they are incapable of action unless the PCs remove said weights. But as the weights do not block off any pathways or contain visible treasure, there’s nothing preventing the party from destroying the undead while they’re helpless: their torsos are pinned, the rest of their bodies visible. Karpathos’ wife, Queen Nemosyne is also pinned in such a manner, although Karpathos rests in a sarcophagus which holds Caduceus (and him) which makes fighting the head vampire mandatory. However, Karpthos cannot be slain as a typical vampire; a portrait of him at an Aresian art gallery is tied up with his essence, and it must be destroyed in order to kill him for good. The PCs have no means of finding this out save via divination spells, although chances are the PCs may slay him once and take the artifact, thus having no incentive to go back into the tomb as long as the magical wards hold up. Thoughts So Far: The first adventure of Odyssey’s third act is off to a rather weak start, and I’m sad to report that it doesn’t improve much from here. The motivating hook in helping create a new pantheon requires a specific type of party set-up to jump at this task, and the whole “it’s in the hands of the Aresians” threat feels hollow given that said city-state has not been a visible element save as background dressing during the prior chapts. Although it is possible for the PCs to use another god (such as Thylea or Mytros) to attain godhood, the plot heavily sells them on the necessity of using Narsus to grant divine titles to mortals in the creation of this new pantheon. The idea that the PCs may become gods is appealing, but there’s no mention of what happens should they be humble enough and set out to find NPC replacements: no such candidates are listed for who can follow in the Five Gods’ footsteps, which is a wasted opportunity. I talked earlier about how the NPC advisors all get unifying opinions in regards to the Aresian invasion, and how this is problematic. The lack of alternative and conflicting opinions seems at odds from what I’d expect to be a motley crew of allies gained during prior adventures. That said advice results in the worst options in terms of loss of life, and that Queen Helen’s demands are more or less what the PCs would want to do anyway, takes a lot of bite out of the entire affair. Join us next time as we battle Scylla in the lost city of the Sirens in Chapter 11, the Sunken Kingdom!
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Apr 24, 2020 03:39
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Ithle01 posted:A long time ago I ran a WHFRP game whose premise was that the characters are mercenaries just discharged from a far-off campaign and in session one they more or less crash their river boat into a sunken pirate ship filled with loot. I kicked around an idea for a Rogue Trader campaign where the players lost their ship to mutiny but stumbled across a wrecked grand cruiser (most powerful ship class in the game, but can have dodgy demon-attracting engines), with the idea being that now they have to get their prize out of the mud and home with a skeleton crew and whatever they can scavenge. The problems I ran into were that RT considers crew population to basically be another hitpoint track, and the penalties in ship combat for having a skeleton crew either rendered the party totally useless or did nothing at all, meaning the party might as well just flip a coin each session to decide if they had a working superpowered spaceship or not. What I am saying is that this is a good premise but one that FFG's game engine cannot handle very well.
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Apr 24, 2020 04:08
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Loxbourne posted:What I am saying is that this is a good premise but one that FFG's game engine cannot handle very well. Man, I should have just posted this for my RT review instead of spending so many words on it.
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Apr 24, 2020 04:52
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Falconier111 posted:I think a part of it was a bunch of extremely awkward people discovering something they felt endorsed people accepting them as they were, barging into various spaces where they thought they could be their regular creepy selves, getting called out for being creepy, and withdrawing as a response, no self-awareness needed. Granted, pop culture was not kind to them, but instead of trying to fix their poo poo a lot of them decided the "tolerant" people they got burned by were hypocrites and closing their communities off. Also, bronies first emerged on 4chan right about when Gamergate was transitioning into the MRA movement, which meant they were perfectly positioned to get involved in one of the movements that would later coalesce into the alt right. And a bunch of people who thought tolerant people were hypocrites, with personal experience for them to appeal to? Perfect recruiting ground. I'm willing to bet that's part of why this creature carries that specific ideological bent; a lot of alt righties worship the free market but think they need a strong and militant government to protect it from any and all outside influences – and communism? The perfect enemy to hold that system together. Mix all that with right wing nostalgia, blend with RPG mechanics, and serve.  , the game.
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Apr 24, 2020 07:00
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Selachian posted:
This is a parody comic, right?
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Apr 24, 2020 07:03
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