Register a SA Forums Account here!
JOINING THE SA FORUMS WILL REMOVE THIS BIG AD, THE ANNOYING UNDERLINED ADS, AND STUPID INTERSTITIAL ADS!!!

You can: log in, read the tech support FAQ, or request your lost password. This dumb message (and those ads) will appear on every screen until you register! Get rid of this crap by registering your own SA Forums Account and joining roughly 150,000 Goons, for the one-time price of $9.95! We charge money because it costs us money per month for bills, and since we don't believe in showing ads to our users, we try to make the money back through forum registrations.
 
  • Post
  • Reply
Night10194
Feb 13, 2012

We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

The Asrai have always had a strong celtic/fae flavor to them, that part is normal enough.

What always astounds me is when an author is writing about their perfect elfs, they almost always make them extremely vicious as well as insufferable. You see the same with the Race War Get hosed Up On Magic Wine holiday in Complete Book of Elves, or the slaving Grey Elves (who are like, double elfs). And yet it's still treated as perfect elfs. The thing that bugs me most in this book is definitely the 'They all instinctively know their place and have no need of dissent or unrest, beneath the Highborn who are their superior people.'

Like we were intentionally making the Asrai an authoritarian nightmare state where the Queen was able to control the gut reactions of how people saw things; making it so their eyes saw everything outside the forest as vicious, so they couldn't easily process her Dryads ripping a criminal or dissident apart for fun, etc, and our version (which was intentionally a campaign villain, departing some from the setting standard) was still less blindly authoritarian since at least it took manipulation and propaganda that they could actually break on an individual level to make the state function how it did. Rather than being portrayed as an inherent 'we all know our place' thing.

It's our old friend, someone trying to write a super utopia accidentally writes a dystopia yet again.

Night10194 fucked around with this message at 19:22 on Apr 29, 2020

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

Zereth
Jul 9, 2003



Night10194 posted:

The Asrai have always had a strong celtic/fae flavor to them, that part is normal enough.

What always astounds me is when an author is writing about their perfect elfs, they almost always make them extremely vicious as well as insufferable. You see the same with the Race War Get hosed Up On Magic Wine holiday in Complete Book of Elves
The what

Loxbourne
Apr 6, 2011

Tomorrow, doom!
But now, tea.

Night10194 posted:

What always astounds me is when an author is writing about their perfect elfs, they almost always make them extremely vicious as well as insufferable. You see the same with the Race War Get hosed Up On Magic Wine holiday in Complete Book of Elves, or the slaving Grey Elves (who are like, double elfs). And yet it's still treated as perfect elfs. The thing that bugs me most in this book is definitely the 'They all instinctively know their place and have no need of dissent or unrest, beneath the Highborn who are their superior people.'

This generally means "the author wants to include stock fantasy tropes which they know are pretty nasty in origin or execution, but doesn't want their perfect race to be criticised for it" Therefore some magical reason why it's not evil to do these things will obligingly show up. "Ferociously defends their home" is cool. "Brooks no interlopers or trespassers" sounds cool. "Shows no mercy" sounds badass. Then the author realises what these things all actually mean when put together, goes "erk", and quickly backtracks to find a way to insist that they're still nice and wonderful people really.

The "instinctively knows their place" thing reeks of "the author wants fancy titles and pretty headdresses for elven nobles, but is aware on some level that feudal systems are brutal and harsh things". So now he needs an excuse to take the sting out and explain that there's no brutality really, and so on.

Night10194
Feb 13, 2012

We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Zereth posted:

The what

In the Complete Book of Elfs for 2e D&D there's a holiday where the elves get hosed up on magic wine and form kill-mobs to go out and compete at collecting orc ears. This is supposed to be jovial and fun.

Mors Rattus
Oct 25, 2007

FATAL & Friends
Walls of Text
#1 Builder
2014-2018

The main thing that really any writer has to understand about WH Wood Elves is that they, as a society, got traumatized by Chaos and their basic response was hypervigilance and disproportionate response to threats.

Night10194
Feb 13, 2012

We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Not even really Chaos; the War of Vengeance. They were founded by deserters and stay-behind colonists who refused the government retreat orders or who just bowed out of that hosed up, pointless hell war. The dwarfs probably might have wiped them out or driven them into the sea if not for A: The magic forests and B: Mazdamundi deciding continental drift was bullshit and destroying the world a little.

THEN came Chaos. Which didn't help. So yeah, even in fully normal canon they're survivalists hiding in their bunker and still kind of terrified someone is going to come finish them off. Even thousands of years later, after building back up and becoming their own countries.

Dawgstar
Jul 15, 2017

Mors Rattus posted:

The main thing that really any writer has to understand about WH Wood Elves is that they, as a society, got traumatized by Chaos and their basic response was hypervigilance and disproportionate response to threats.

Yeah, it amply leaves room for the odd Wood Elf to leave the forest and adventure. They're trying to track down some Chaos thing or.... well, they just get bored.

Selachian
Oct 9, 2012



The Yellow King Roleplaying Game is a Gumshoe-based horror game by Robin D. Laws, inspired by Robert W. Chambers's stories of the King in Yellow.

For your $100 US, you get a slipbox (which folds apart into two GM information screens) containing four 9" x 6" books, one for each of the game's four campaigns:

- Paris casts the PCs as art students in fin-de-siecle Paris who are drawn into occult mysteries.
- In The Wars, the PCs are soldiers fighting in a seemingly endless European war, encountering strange weapons and stranger monsters on the battlefield.
- Aftermath is set in an America that has just thrown off the yoke of an oppressive emperor. The PCs, as former insurgents, must help decide how to rebuild the newly liberated country.
- This Is Normal Now is set today, in our own world, where there is absolutely nothing weird going on.

The books are sturdy and solidly bound, with built-in bookmark cords, and should stand up to plenty of handling.

YKRPG uses a variation of Gumshoe that Laws calls QuickShock Gumshoe. It mostly differs from standard Gumshoe in the areas of combat and damage, as well as being entirely player-facing – the GM never rolls dice. Most of the game rules are in Paris, the first book.

To create a character, each player chooses one of seven investigative kits, each of which provides four investigative abilities. In Paris, the PCs are assumed to be American art students living in 1895 Paris, although it's possible they could be from other countries as well, or even be non-Parisian French. The kits available for Paris are:

Architecture Student
Belle-Lettrist (i.e., a journalist who specializes in opinion and essay writing, instead of straight reportage)
Landscape Painter
Muse (someone who may not have artistic talent themselves but helps to support and inspire artists)
Poet
Portrait Painter
Sculptor

If not all kits are chosen, the players can add abilities from non-chosen kits to their own. If you have more than seven players, the extra players can be Gadabouts (dilettantes), choosing four abilities from the main kits.

Players then choose General Kits, which provide 32 points assigned to the ten general abilities, producing ratings between 0 and 8. Players can also design their own kits by assigning their own points. The book notes that going below 6 in Composure or Fighting can make things difficult, although some of the provided kits have only 5 in Fighting.

The above is if the campaign is being run in Horror mode, which produces less capable and more fragile PCs. You can also play the game in Occult Adventures mode, which gives you +1 to Composure and Fighting and +1 to the two highest general abilities in your kit, or 36 points if you're building your own.

The General Kits available include:

Athlete
Former Cadet
Cool Customer
Scrounger
Former Med Student
Tinkerer
Raised on a Farm
Raised on the Streets
Spent Time in a Factory

Once you've picked your Kits, you can give your character a name, gender, and background; the book notes that you do not have to include historically accurate 1895 views on race, gender, and/or orientation in your game. At this point, the book also has a sidebar explaining the X-Card system for dealing with potentially problematic story elements.

Those elements chosen, you assign a Drive – a reason your character might be drawn to investigate the supernatural instead of just locking the door and staying home. A list of common Drives is included, such as Curiosity, Ennui (“I'm so terribly bored, only the supernatural excites my jaded senses”), or Rationalism (“there must be a reasonable explanation and I'll find it!”), or you can come up with your own Drive.

Next comes That Deuced Peculiar Business, a quick description of something weird and unexplainable that's happened to your character in their past, like bizarre recurring dreams, glimpses of monsters in the mirror, cryptic messages appearing on the wall, or receiving a misaddressed package with a strangely designed and bloodstained dagger in it. The Drives and the Deuced Peculiar Businesses are tools for the GM in designing scenarios that the PCs, and players, will find compelling.

Finally, go around the table and, in turn, ask each player to name one of the other PCs they depend on, and one that they tend to protect. Each player must choose from characters who haven't already been picked. These relationships are also a motivational tool for the GM and a way to ensure that the group stays together.

Next comes a description of the investigative abilities available to the players. These are divided between Academic (knowing stuff), Interpersonal (getting people to tell you stuff), and Technical (being able to do stuff). The investigative abilities available in Paris are:

Architecture
Art History
Assess Honesty
Belle-Lettres (being able to write with wit and style, as well as knowing important people to write and gossip about)
Bonhomie (being charming and attractive)
Culture (general knowledge of the arts)
Demimonde (knowing your way around the underworld)
Fashion
History
Inspiration (motivating people and making friends through a positive attitude)
Intuition
Military History
Miscellany (trivia buff)
Natural History
Negotiation
Occultism
Officialdom (bureaucracy)
Painting
Photography
Poetry
Reassurance (getting people to calm down and trust you)
Research
Sculpture
Society (being able to behave around the better classes)
Steel (impressing people by being a tough badass)
Technology

Investigative abilities work much as they do in other Gumshoe games – if you're in a situation where one of your investigative abilities can lead to a clue, you get the clue. Unlike other Gumshoe games, the investigative abilities don't have point ratings. Instead, you get two Pushes per scenario, which can be spent when you want to make exceptional use of one of your investigative abilities, such as using an interpersonal ability to get someone to go above and beyond in helping you, or using an artistic skill to produce striking, memorable work. Each investigative ability includes a brief list of what it can be used to do, and in some cases what a Push can get you.

Tibalt
May 14, 2017

What, drawn, and talk of peace! I hate the word, As I hate hell, all Montagues, and thee

Night10194 posted:

In the Complete Book of Elfs for 2e D&D there's a holiday where the elves get hosed up on magic wine and form kill-mobs to go out and compete at collecting orc ears. This is supposed to be jovial and fun.
It's really easy to make Orcs into Conan and Elves into Every Conan Wizard, Vizier, or Merchant Villain, isn't it.

Prism
Dec 22, 2007

yospos

Thank you, it's appreciated.

You're right. It's a good picture.

Cythereal
Nov 8, 2009

I love the potoo,
and the potoo loves you.

Loxbourne posted:

The "instinctively knows their place" thing reeks of "the author wants fancy titles and pretty headdresses for elven nobles, but is aware on some level that feudal systems are brutal and harsh things". So now he needs an excuse to take the sting out and explain that there's no brutality really, and so on.

And/or doesn't want to write internal political and social conflicts, because writing such conflicts in an interesting way is hard, especially if you don't want a straight forward good guys/bad guys thing.

LazyAngel
Mar 17, 2009



Heart: The City Beneath
10 - Landmarks, Tier 0 and 1
Bit of a delay again, but let's press ahead with the example Landmarks. You're encouraged to make up your own, and some that have been mentioned by name only won't appear in this section, but there's a healthy number to populate your campaign's version of the Heart with.

Tier 0
There is only one landmark in Tier 0; Derelictus, the City Between. It, or whatever settlement occupied its caverns before it, have always been the point of intersection between the sunny world above, and the nightmare below, so it's no wonder that it was the planned home of what would have been the Vermissian's greatest station. Abandoned, along with the rest of the system, arching ceilings of broken glass tower above the bustling market that's been built up on the original station platforms. These are divided by the goods they offer, but all are there to cater to the needs of prospective delvers. Platform 1 has the best gear, way out of the reach of most delvers, who will find the basics to keep them alive on platforms 2 and 3. Platform 4 is a clearing house for those looking for work - several organisations recruit delvers at offices here, although only some are openly advertised.

In game terms, Derelictus can be used to reset a character's stress as they spend a few days R&R here; it's also a good place to shift the choicest bits of loot from deep down in the City Below. Amusingly, it's also the safest place delvers are likely to find themselves (in contrast to Spire, where it's the archetypical wretching hive of scum and villany - for delvers, that's Tuesday).

Tier 1
This is where you start to get into the Heart proper, and where many outcast sects and organisations make their home - deep enough that they're away from the eyes of the authorities, but shallow enough to avoid the truely weird poo poo.

The God of Corpses is the corpse of some great, unidentifiable beast, and is home to a sect who worship the Seven Sacred Ailments, considering all other diseases to be unholy and the work of demons. As a consequence, you can find excellent, if erratic medical care here. There's a quiet war here between opposing cults who alternately seek to awaken the god-beast, and ensure its slumber.

Grip Station was built in a cavern festooned with crystalline stalagtites and the aelfir constructors constructed huge spotlights to provide a wondrous vista for trains passing through. Unfortunately these turned out to be too expensive, and any trains moving faster than a crawl caused stalagtites to start falling from the ceiling, creating a truely terrifying experience.

Labyrinth is the work of a couple of hundred sufferers of an occult disease. One victim might construct walls of cardboard around their bedroom, taking refuge in a cupboard, but get a bigger group together and they'll wall up streets, dig vicious pit-traps and generally make a nuisance of themselves.


There's not many druids in the City Above; it's not a place resplendant with nature, but in Redcap Grove they've found their niche. Realising that their arts gave them access to a) fast-growing plants and b) control over the dangerous wildlife, they're now behind the most prolific and best guarded drug farms in the City Above or Below.

The Deep Apiarists maintain a number of settlements throughout the Heart, and Resonance Chamber Five is one of the shallowest, broadcasting the hum - the signal that the bees use to communicate - throughout the City Below, via the Apiarists' strange anti-chaotic technology.

Sump Station would be a decent place to live, that is if the drainage pumps worked anymore. Something lives in the deep water and countless delvers have drowned here whilst looking for artifacts of the long-closed transport system.

The Temple of the Moon Beneath has already been covered, four of the subsidiary temples, dedicated to the Damnic Virtues, are also located on this tier. The temple of Community is a nice enough place and the inhabitants are exceedingly friendly. It's not even a front for anything more sinister. The temple of Fury was founded by a particularly genocidal follower of Lekole, the red moon, and he's now bound in its catacombs, unable to truly die (the official story has him a saint for defending the settlement, the truth is significantly less noble). Sagacity's temple is a place of constant philisophical debate; indeed, the priests here believe that if the constant debate ever ends, a great catastrophe will occur. Finally, the temple of Vigilance was traditionally a training ground for spies, but there's not much call for that down here, so it's now a paranoid hive of constant misdirection and back-biting.

The Tower is the product of a visionary architect, now exiled from the City Above after her grand vision of a perfect society where everyone had a place was rejected by the powers that be. Down in the City Below, free from critics, planning laws, or the fundemental laws of space and time, she's built her utopia; a miniature replica of the Spire. And it actually works - it's kind of empty, and the constant threat of monsters is an issue, but the inhabitants are truly content. And if you spend time here, you too might never want to leave.

Finally for Tier 1, the Tunnels of Wet Filth are a convenient place for the City Above to dispose of the immense volume of sewage its population generates. And yet people still live here, wallowing in the filth, worshipping the great god who defecates on them from above. It's a good place to shift loot that other places won't even look at, but you'll stink for weeks after visiting.

Next: Things get weirder

Everyone
Sep 6, 2019

by sebmojo

Tibalt posted:

It's really easy to make Orcs into Conan and Elves into Every Conan Wizard, Vizier, or Merchant Villain, isn't it.

Forgotten Realm is generally a bit crap, but they kind of pulled the trigger on that with Obould Many Arrows.

GimpInBlack
Sep 27, 2012

That's right, kids, take lots of drugs, leave the universe behind, and pilot Enlightenment Voltron out into the cosmos to meet Alien Jesus.
Night's Black Agents: Solo Ops

Part Four: Atomic Brunette

Fights

Lots of games will tell you that they aren't about heavy, tactical combat, and that fighting is secondary to story and roleplaying... and then hit you with a 50-page combat system replete with tons of modifiers, attack options, and the obligatory over-complicated grappling subsystem.

Solo Ops' combat section is FOUR pages, and it can pretty much be boiled down into one sentence: A fight scene is handled exactly like any other challenge, just done with your Fighting or Shooting ability. The rest of the section is mainly a discussion of why that is, along with example challenges. Short version: a PC's death breaks one-on-one games in ways that a single PC death in a group game doesn't, so death generally has to be off the table, and if the ultimate consequence is off the table, tactical considerations lose a lot of their meaning, so the game wholly dispenses with tactical considerations beyond "how many resources should I commit to this challenge?" I'm not entirely sure I buy that, especially given that there's also a whole section on how to lose a fight without a) getting killed or b) destroying the plausibility of the vampires not just putting a bullet in your brainpan, but I'm certainly not going to bemoan the lack of an over-complicated grappling system.

We haven't actually had an example challenge write-up yet in this review. So here, this is what they look like:

Elevator Brawl posted:

FIGHTING

Advance 7+: You step out of the elevator unruffled, leaving a half- dozen unconscious goons on the floor behind you. You tuck the room key card you looted from Goon #4 into your purse. You can check out the bad guys’ room in the scene “Room 1001.”

Hold 4-6: There are too many of them to fight in this cramped elevator, so when the doors open you throw yourself out and run like hell. You manage to lose them by darting into a laundry room, but they’re looking for you.

Setback 3 or less: There are too many of them and you’ve got to escape. When the doors open, you fling yourself out of the elevator, race down the corridor, and smash through the window. Gain the Problem “Hasty Exit.” You can’t return to this hotel again without being spotted, so pick another line of investigation.

Extra Problem: “The Big Guy’s Nose”

Stunt? Yes. (Athletics, for acrobatic fighting in the elevator; Mechanics, to grab a fire hose and use it as an improvised weapon; Shooting, to go loud.)

Problem
Hasty Exit

You smashed your way out of the hotel, and now the bad guys are on their guard. You’re at -1 die to your next Surveillance or Infiltration Challenge, then discard this Problem.

Problem
The Big Guy’s Nose

BLOWBACK

In the course of the fight, you smashed the nose of the biggest henchman. He wants revenge.
Did you like Captain America: The Winter Soldier? Me too! And so did Gareth Ryder-Hanrahan!

We also get a short section on how "getting captured" is a time-honored tradition in the spy genre, but one that many gamers hate even more than seeing their characters killed or maimed. Which I get in more traditional games with those traditional combat systems: the mechanics in those games often have clear rules that say "when you take X damage, you are dead," but "you are captured" often boils down to GM fiat in the absence of specific rules for bad guys taking hostages. For that reason, the Director is told to get buy-in from the player at the beginning of the game: if "gets captured" is an unacceptable outcome for the player, find other problems to introduce in Setbacks. If they are cool with it, however, GUMSHOE comes with a consolation prize for being captured: when you get nabbed, you get to ask the Director any one question you want about the opposition's plans, structure, members, anything you want. An answer to that question will appear during your prison break.

As much as I'm always in favor of more explicit instructions to get player buy-in, this section is pretty much a direct copy-paste from the original Night's Black Agents, and it kind of shows. For one thing, the Advance/Hold/Setback structure does give you clear mechanical structure for getting captured. For another, the whole section on "you will have a chance to escape" makes sense if you're addressing one PC out of a group (i.e. you don't have to just sit around and wait for the rest of the party to rescue you), but in a one-on-one game, it's kind of... obvious? There are a few places where this book lifts text directly from Night's Black Agents and it doesn't quite work--most of the time it's because the editors missed a GUMSHOE rules reference (i.e. referring to an Investigative spend rather than a Push or talking about ability pools), but this is one piece I think would have benefited from being rewritten to focus more on what being captured means in a single-player game.

The Combat section rounds out with rules for what happens if Contacts get involved in fights (or, really, any potentially-dangerous challenge). It's pretty simple: If they have a relevant General ability listed on their Contact card, they can take care of themselves and don't really help you or hinder you (you can, of course, spend a Push to get them to help you out and add their dice to yours for the challenge). If they don't, however, you have a choice: You can take a -1 die penalty to protect them, otherwise they're collateral damage to whatever extent the GM wishes. In either case, though, if you suffer a Setback, your Contact suffers a similar fate.

(A brief aside. I've been carefully making sure I write "Director" in these reviews rather than going on autopilot and writing "GM." Apparently more careful than Solo Ops, as I've just noticed it uses both terms.)

Extended Challenge Sequences

This section is presented as its own section, but it still seems pretty concerned with fights, so maybe it should have been part of the Fights section. Anyways, this is where we learn about how sometimes, usually at the climax of an operation, a single challenge isn't quite enough to capture the tension and danger of a scene. In those cases, you can string multiple challenges together--but be very careful when doing this with multiple challenges for the same ability: since PCs deplete their abilities after they use them, they'll need a solid hand of Edges, opportunities to Push and Stunt with different abilities, and maybe even Contacts with General abilities to lend. In any case, you should almost never chain more than two or three together. Sequential challenges using different abilities (e.g. an Infiltration followed by Fighting followed by Evasion to model "sneak in, assassinate target, escape his pissed-off security detail) is less harsh, but you'll definitely want to give the player time to replenish all those depleted abilities later.

Contacts

We've actually already covered pretty much all the rules for Contacts--they're kind of spread out through the rest of the Rules chapter. The only new thing here is the default Network challenge you use when you want to gin up a Contact and the adventure (or the Director) doesn't have a more specific one planned:

Friends in Low Places posted:

NETWORK

Penalty: -1 per Heat Problem in your hand. -4 if you’ve got the “Angel of Death” Problem.

Advance 7+: You’ve got a Contact in town, and an associated advantage. Pick one: either the Contact is someone you know and trust, or the Contact owes you a favor from a past encounter (free Push), or you’ve got blackmail or other leverage over the Contact (free Push), or the Contact is unusually influential, highly placed, or skilled.

Hold 4-6: You’ve got a regular Contact in town. They’ll supply you with information, and may give extra help if you spend a Push.

Setback 3 or less: You’ve got a Contact in town, but there’s a catch. Pick one: either the Contact hates/mistrusts you (requires an extra Push to get help from this Contact), or you owe the Contact a debt or favor (requires you to balance the scales before the Contact helps you), or getting to the Contact is difficult and challenging (they’re in prison/under surveillance/far away).

Extra Problem: Gain one Heat Problem.

Stunt: No.

Problem
Angel of Death

You got a Contact killed through your actions, and word has spread. You’ve got a -4 penalty to Network tests while you hold this card. Discard at the end of the next operation.

That Problem right there is why you want to take that -1 die penalty to keep your Contacts safe.

I like this challenge a lot, except for the two options under Advance that both give you a free Push. They certainly have different narrative effects, but given that they have the same mechanical effect I'd collapse them into one option: "The Contact owes you a favor, or you have blackmail on them (one free Push)," and maybe add "The Contact can take care of themselves in a fight" as a new replacement option.

Cumulative Problems

There are three special categories of Problem card that represent the ratcheting up of tension and the increasing danger as an operation goes on. In all three cases, while individual problems might have flavor text reminding you of where you got them and maybe have mechanics of their own, what matters more is how many of them you have.

Heat represents attention you've drawn from the authorities: local cops, federal agencies, and the like. The more Heat cards you have, the worse Blowback you'll face from the fuzz. As we saw with the Network challenge above, sometimes you'll also face a penalty equal to the number of Heat cards you have. You gain Heat in all the ways you'd expect--gunfights in public, property damage, getting people hurt, etc. You might also gain Heat when you move from city to city, as your travel documents get flagged--you can usually avoid that with a quick test of Cover, though. You can lose one or more Heat in a few ways: Taking time to stay off the streets lets you discard one (doing so in a safehouse operated by a Contact lets you discard another). Favors from appropriate Contacts can get rid of one or more cards, as can crossing international borders as long as you pass that Cover test. Finally, of course, you can always frame up some poor unsuspecting stooge for your crimes.

Shadow is to the vampire menace what Heat is to the human authorities. It represents how supernaturally aware of you the vampires are and how easily they can hit you with supernatural assault as Blowback. You earn Shadow by encountering and/or poking at the supernatural, damaging the vampire conspiracy, or even just recalling previous encounters with vampires (usually as the effects of a Setback on Cool tests). Tasting vampire blood, or a vampire tasting yours, is also good for some Shadow in most campaigns. Unlike Heat, Shadow is very hard to get rid of--your options are basically "kill the head vampire in charge of the local conspiracy forces" or "flee the country," both of which let you discard all Shadow cards that lack the Continuity tag. In the short-term, you get possibly my favorite mechanic in the whole drat game: Your traditional anti-vampire measures (e.g. garlic, running water, crucifixes over the bed if you're a traditionalist), reflected as Edge cards, act as blocks on your Shadow score. If you can avail yourself of their protection, you can temporarily treat your Shadow score as lower. If you have 5 Shadow cards but you can sleep in a safehouse on a river island (surrounded by running water) with ropes of garlic around the windows and doors, you only suffer Blowback as though your Shadow was 2. The specific things that block Shadow will be heavily dependent on the exact flavor of vampire in your campaign, but this is a fantastic streamlining of the vampire response pyramid from original Night's Black Agents while also giving some real incentive to discover and deploy anti-vampire countermeasures. I love it.

Finally, Injuries are what happen when you get beat to hell. Each Injury card in your hand hits you with a whopping -2 penalty to all physical tests (not 2 dice, just -2 knocked off the result of your first die roll). That's very, very bad, and along with recovering depleted General abilities, managing injury is one of the main reasons you'll need to stop and take time during the operation (which gives the Director a chance to throw some Blowback your way and nicely models the push-and-pull dynamic of a thriller plot). Whenever you take time for any reason, you discard all your current Injuries and replace them with half that many Hurt cards (rounding down). Each Hurt card is a -1 penalty to Physical actions, so you've effectively quartered your penalty--and if you only had one Injury when you took time, you're penalty-free. Hurt cards stay in your hand until the end of the operation, or until there's an exceptionally long chunk of downtime (days or weeks).

If you specifically devote taking time to patching up your injuries (either on your own or by drumming up a no-questions-asked doctor as a Contact), you can make a Medic challenge to discard some Injuries before you do the conversion to Hurt cards.

Finally, you might get hit with a Serious Injury. This works just like a regular Injury except that it doesn't automatically get converted into Hurt, you have to take specific action to discard it or downgrade it to a regular injury--and if you haven't dealt with it by the end of the operation, you die. Other Problems can follow this same pattern, with death, permanent mental breakdown, or other removed-from-play-permanently consequences on offer. Other than very rare challenges at the climax of an operation, which might kill you on a Setback, this is the only way for a Solo Ops PC to die.

Actually, finally finally, for reasons I cannot fathom, tucked in as a subsection under "Cumulative Problems" are the rules for character advancement: At the end of each operation, either learn one new Investigative ability or put a tick next to one General ability. Once an ability has three ticks, you get an extra die in that ability. General abilities never go above 3, and if for some reason you end up losing a die in an ability due to a Continuity Problem, it takes two ticks to buy back a second die. It's simple and straightforward, but the book is unfortunately silent on how advanced abilities interact with depleting. By a strict reading of the rules, "depleted" is binary, not cumulative, meaning the lowest an advanced General ability can ever get is 2 dice (and, by extension, meaning you can never lose the ability to Stunt with that ability, since a Stunt adds ½ your ability rating rounded down). That seems like a pretty sharp spike in ability, so I'm inclined to say the intent is that depleting an ability is cumulative, with a minimum rating of one die, but the book doesn't address that at all.

Next Time: Europe, backstage and underground

Night10194
Feb 13, 2012

We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Man, I am totally into actually having a system to get captured so I have a reason to interact directly with Dracula (but he controls the CIA) before managing to somehow escape.

E: I suspect the reason a lot of players hate capture so much in other RPGs is because lacking direct rules for how to do it, it usually happens like Hams Railroading like you see in the 4e intro or Thousand Thrones Chapter 2: An unwinnable combat encounter or whatever shows up (Hello, Warhammer Cops, I don't miss you), or the GM just says 'you're captured! Now, on to forcing you into the plot'. Rather than it being one of the consequence options you get to choose for losing a fight.

Night10194 fucked around with this message at 13:44 on Apr 30, 2020

GimpInBlack
Sep 27, 2012

That's right, kids, take lots of drugs, leave the universe behind, and pilot Enlightenment Voltron out into the cosmos to meet Alien Jesus.

Night10194 posted:

Man, I am totally into actually having a system to get captured so I have a reason to interact directly with Dracula (but the he controls the CIA) before managing to somehow escape.

We might very well see that happen in the adventures, depending on dice rolls!

Of particular interest, too, I just realized the book makes no exception for letting yourself get captured. So if you really want a particular piece of intel, you can absolutely just dangle yourself in front of the conspiracy, voluntarily fail the inevitable Evasion challenge when they try to grab you, and you're guaranteed your answer and your chance to escape (and if you're using the house rule of I mused on back in part 3, you'd get a Push). That is wonderfully in-genre.

wiegieman
Apr 22, 2010

Royalty is a continuous cutting motion


And with Preparation you could even have things set up to cause some damage in the secret vampire lair they bring you to (AK with silver bullets stashed in a false wall?)

Everyone
Sep 6, 2019

by sebmojo

GimpInBlack posted:

We might very well see that happen in the adventures, depending on dice rolls!

Of particular interest, too, I just realized the book makes no exception for letting yourself get captured. So if you really want a particular piece of intel, you can absolutely just dangle yourself in front of the conspiracy, voluntarily fail the inevitable Evasion challenge when they try to grab you, and you're guaranteed your answer and your chance to escape (and if you're using the house rule of I mused on back in part 3, you'd get a Push). That is wonderfully in-genre.

Well, wasn't that that how James Bond achieved victory in, I dunno, 95% of his movies? The bad guy captures him, spills his entire plan to Bond, puts Bond into some silly-rear end "deathtrap" from which Bond escapes, at which point Bond kills the dude and blows up his base - and then fucks whatever surviving Bond Girl is around.

It's going to be weird seeing Ana de Armas and Daniel Craig in those roles in the next Bond film after the amazeballs that was Knives Out.

Night10194
Feb 13, 2012

We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 2e: Defenders of the Forest

Elfs Do Not Work That Way

Alright, I've got a dumb canon thing I'm gonna get mad at in this chapter. I'm not normally big on fixed canon or getting mad for deviating from it, but this was a really important and genuinely cool point that this book just flings out the window: This book gives Elfs divine magic, just like humans. It was (and is, in later material) a really, genuinely important point that elfs not only don't have that, they don't understand how humans do. They believe it's 'just' color magic, because elfs don't really see outside the color magic paradigm. Elfs having a genuinely different relationship with their Gods and humans having some things they could do that made no goddamn sense to elfs was actually really cool.

It would be fine to make elf priests magic users; in fluff, they are! They're just using color magic, in replication of their Gods. But this is full on mechanical Divine Magic. Even a little note about 'these are spells dedicated to this God, but they're an Arcane tradition' would have worked. It's frustrating because it takes a cool setting mystery (What is Divine Magic, and why are only humans able to use it?) and just kinda throws it out a window. But that's the case for most of the fluff in this book. It throws interesting possibilities out the window in favor of very generic fantasy elfs. Normally in Hams there's a twist. This version of the Wood Elfs would be perfectly at home in the Complete Book of Elves.

Also, all Wood Elfs are super spiritual and so they get lots of easy paths into Priest besides doing Initiate. After all, they all embrace Yenlui. Oh, and they can create sacred groves that heal people super quick, remove Insanity, let them meditate to spend EXP to remove actual inflicted Insanities, not just IP, repel Chaos, etc. They have a super special meditation Talent 'Bran-wen-shin' that can remove any Insanity if they have a grove to meditate in. Remember, if you're using Insanity, it's one of the most likely ways to take a PC out longterm (since Fate can't be used to mitigate it), compared to death or mutation. Woodsy Elfs get to no-sell it with their holistic meditation techniques about how great they are.

The Wood Elfs deal with an otherworld, a realm of spirits where they have their pact-bonded spirits, some of which hate them, most of which love them. I'm not going to get into the generic spirits too much, we'd be here all day. Just imagine they're all very mystical and epic. There's also naturally one who watches over all the stolen children. The included adventure in this book is actually about the child theft, and is about how it's magical and really for humans' own good. Also answers all the mysteries about it flatly and quickly (The boys are held because they're too vulnerable to Chaos, but will be released from their magical always-child neverland when humanity is enlightened enough to safely teach boys. Meh.). Look, Defenders of the Forest, I came here from a way, way better book over in Bretonnia that was not about how much of a blessing it was that you fuckers steal babies.

Anyway, Asrai are super into Isha. Isha is the elven goddess of 'fertility and magic', the Great Mother, who is in a standard Maiden Mother Crone dealio with Lileath (Dreams) and Morag-Hai (Death/Fate). The Gods don't really get any of the richness you get with the human Gods in Tome of Salvation, it's mostly just descriptions of how awesome they all are and how the elves love them and they help the elves form a totally perfect society. Isha is super important for her fertility rites, and also for the fact that Queen Ariel of Loren is her Avatar. Ariel is described as 'an ideal deus ex machina for a GM' as she senses the pain of all living things and can step in to instantly solve anything that threatened to be interesting in your campaign. She has pretty huge stats, being a super-badass wizard who is no slouch in combat. She doesn't get a lot of personality beyond 'high numbers, Demigod'. Almost all of her description is powers, not personality. She's powerful, but if unsupported would go down like a sack of bricks against 3rd tiers. Maybe even 2nd tiers. A Greater Demon scale foe she ain't; I wouldn't even put her up there with a full Chaos Sorcerer if they had their armor and one of the better Lores. Some Demigod.

Isha also gets the only Divine Lore, with the author insisting the other Gods will have them in 'coming expansions'. Optimistic plans. It's actually a pretty lovely Lore, like being a much worse version of Taal and Rhya. So they get this special lore of their 'awesome' goddess and...it sucks. It does stuff like 'heal 1 Wound to multiple characters' or 'buff plant-based magic' or 'interact with the Getting Lost In Time And Space teleport system'. Nothing with any real impact. Which is hilarious.

Kurnous is all about killing people, animals, and other things. I'm sorry, he's the God of the Hunt. Orion, Ariel's husband, is his avatar and exists to beat PCs with a stick if they don't play along. No, really, that's his job: He is Judge, Jury, and Executioner of PCs, the book says so. Every Autumn, in Kurnous's name, Orion leads a Wild Hunt to murder shitloads of Bretonnians for fun. Such good allies the Fae are. This is necessary because the elves have to get their thrill-kill on. It's sort of a 'purge' situation, where they gotta go purge for a bit and that'll keep Khorne and Chaos out of the Loren. By doing exactly the stuff Khorne loves: Randomly murdering a shitload of people. Elfs can get too into this and turn into 8 foot tall horned super-warriors who spend all their time partying with Orion and killing people, and dreaming of killing people when they're not killing. You know, like a cat. These guys are WS 67, SB 4, TB 5, 3 attack, 18 Wound murder machines who exist to kill PCs. Orion himself is WS 86, SB 5, TB 5, Wounds 38, 6 attacks, and armed with magic weapons and poo poo, but no armor. As a result, a 3rd tier party can definitely cut him down, which would be kind of embarrassing for the GM trying to use him as a stick. Should've used his swarm of super-mooks instead, unnamed GM! They're way more dangerous! Really, the Hunters are overtuned, but Orion is weaker than an Exalted Lord. Despite being a Demigod. At least when he dies he doesn't die; they just have to murder another elf to get him back. They also do that once a year, murdering an elf to get Orion to possess him and show up. Fun times in the Loren.

Lileath is the Maiden of Dreams, so the only goddess with a vow of chastity. You have to become one of her priests immediately on 'reaching sexual maturity' so you can be pure and incorruptible. This is most of her description.

Leoc is Elf Ranald, but shittier. He goes around loving with people randomly and causing chaos. The Wardancers worship him. He always causes 'positive outcomes' despite 'causing more trouble than good', and likes to get Gods to fight each other. Elfs have learned not to trust foxes, because this guy likes them so magic forest foxes just run around loving with elfs and stealing their food. C'mon, book, you aren't even going to mention what Tome of Salvation did? That his priests are called Feastmasters? That already gives them more personality. You could write Perfectly Generic Trickster God in four words and already get across this writeup.

Mathalaan is totally not Manaan wearing elf ears. We swear. Nor is Manaan Mathalaan, but wearing a fake mustache. Asrai don't care about the sea god because they're landlocked, until he withholds rain because he's pissed and they remember absolutely nobody gets away with loving with sea gods. Just ask Odysseus how that went. Oh, also, the Queen of Laurelorn is somehow his daughter and covered in scales and possessed by an evil spirit that wants to merge this reality and another so he can exist, so that's a thing. This is silly. Why are you wasting 'daughter of the Sea God' on someone who lives in a landlocked region. Also, there's a lot of love of 'divine bloodlines' in this book and I don't like it.

Morag-Hai is lovely Elf Morr. She likes ravens, knowing when you're going to die, and ravens. Elfs know dying is super important and totally accept death and passage to their magic Otherworld, and can totally come back all the time as magic animals.

Vaul is the best Elf God but doesn't get much of a writeup here. Nothing about Asuryan leaving Isha and Kurnous out to dry like a bastard at Khaine's hands (which you'd think the Asrai would be into, you'd think they'd see a reflection of Caledor II getting them all hosed by the War of Vengeance in that story) until Vaul tried to rescue them because he wouldn't stand for this poo poo and got crippled for it, since nobody else backed him up. Just 'he's a crippled forge god they worship to ground them so they don't get too silly'.

So yeah, elf religion is neither rich nor compelling in this book. Nothing about the cults' interactions with one another, no-one has heterodoxies or alternate beliefs, no real philosophy. Just a collection of very generic fantasy Gods and two powerful NPCs who exist to shepherd your game. Disappointing, considering how fun Hams religion normally is. But then, the Elf Gods have never gotten much definition and have always been total dicks (except Vaul and Hoeth) next to the human ones. Always been my theory about why elfs don't get divine magic normally; their Gods don't really inspire it, since they're dicks.

Next Time: The Mysterious Wonder Of The Otherworld

Tibalt
May 14, 2017

What, drawn, and talk of peace! I hate the word, As I hate hell, all Montagues, and thee

Warhammer Fantasy Role Playing 4th Edition Starter Set
Part 4: Troubled Town - Without A Trace and Dramatic Currency
Quality: 4
Guidance: 3


In this section Klumpenklug retires to the Raspy Raven tavern, where he’ll accept the PCs' patrol reports and a portion of the 'fines' they collect. The section contains 2 adventures that are well developed and pretty entertaining, and one adventure that should have been cut completely. I’ll cover the latter adventure first. Dramatic Currency relates to the milky eyed assassin that murdered Fosten during the riot. He’s a thug named Einuage Spaltmann with a mutation that lets him see in the dark out of his ‘bad’ eye. He was hired by a rival entertainer named Benedict Gurkenfeld, the actor-owner of the Theatre Variete. Gurkenfled hired Spaltmann to incite the crowd and turn them against the rival entertainers, but “imagined some thrown tomatoes and perhaps a scuffle, not a massive brawl and murder!” Spaltmann will refuse to implicate Gurkenfeld (so you’ll never find out this backstory) and it doesn’t affect the rest of the adventure in any way, shape, or form. Most of the write-up is for Spaltmann’s stat block, with a few scant lines about how to find him and why he did it. I would have cut it and the murder completely.

Well, okay, enough of that. The first adventure in the section Without A Trace. A poor boy approaches the PCs about his missing father who disappeared in the middle of a dark, foggy night. Everyone else has written this off as a deadbeat father abandoning his family, and that beggars disappear on the Docks all the time, but the boy thinks the PCs are proper officers of the law who can help him. If the PCs ask around about it, they discover a dozen other people have disappeared - "not just beggars, but respectable folk" including former members of the Watch. If they bring it up with Klumpenklug, he suspiciously tells them to drop it immediately. This is a red herring, as the missing Watch members were Jungfreud loyalists that Klumpenklug helped identify and he doesn't want people to discover his betrayal.

When they investigate it further, the local crime lord known as The Baron might send a group of thugs to rough them up. This is another red herring - the Baron isn't involved with the missing people, but assumes the PCs are investigating her instead. If they persist in investigating, they learn that the missing beggar wasn't involved with crime.
pre:
M   WS  BS  S   T   I   Agi Dex Int WP  Fel W
4   50  30  30  40  30  30  30  30  30  30  12
Weapon +6
There's one thug for each member in the party, plus one additional thug. This would actually be the more dangerous encounter in this section, if the thugs weren't there to just rough up the PCs instead of killing them. The premade party is able to handle this due to their skills and armor, but a 0 XP party is going to be outclassed and outnumbered, and will need good luck and lots of rerolls to win. Otherwise, they’ll just get a regular beat down.

Eventually the PCs will find their first actual clue - an 'abandoned' rowing boat with huge claw marks and a section of stone and wood fused together from Troll vomit. The culprit is the Teufel Terror, an intelligent and stealthy river troll. No one will believe them if they claim a troll is hiding in the middle of the city, so the adventure expects you to lay a trap for it. This is where the book introduces the Critical Wounds rules, as they fight the Teufel Terror.
pre:
M   WS  BS  S   T   I   Agi Dex Int WP  Fel W
4   40  15  55  45  20  15  15  30  20  5   38
Amphibious, Armor(2), Bite +8, Die Hard, Night Vision, Painless, Regenerate, Size(Large), Vomit, Weapon +9
it's not as dangerous as it appears, especially for the premade party. First, it'll flee after dropping below 20 wounds, which makes it significantly easier to scare off then outright killing it, and reduces the effectiveness of Regenerate and Painless. Second, it will be outnumbered, meaning the players will probably be able to build up some Advantage if they use their rerolls. Third, it has I 20, meaning an entire party of 0 XP characters will get to act first to try and scare it off before it gets its first turn. At least one PC should connect on an attack, meaning the troll won't have much Advantage to use on Bite or Vomit attacks.

I rolled out combat with the premade party and a group of five randomly generated 0 XP characters to support Felix to see how they'd do. The premade party rolled well and reduced the troll to 0 wounds in the first round of combat. The Felix's party was able to scare it off after three rounds, but it required everyone to use up almost all of their Fortune points, one of the characters to burn a Fate point to avoid death, and another chose to take a point of Corruption to get a second reroll. It's a potentially deadly fight, but even 0 XP characters should succeed if they use their rerolls and have reasonable luck.

...if the GM isn't using the rules for Outnumbering an enemy in melee, which aren't included in the Starter Kit rules. I didn't use them when rolling out combat above, but I can predict the effect. If the GM is using those rules, the troll is doomed. If an enemy is outnumbered 3 to 1, you get a +40 WS modifier when attacking them - any character is going to outclass the troll in combat, and the increased SL is going to negate the troll's armor and most of the Toughness Bonus. The troll will still have a good shot of downing a PC each round with their standard attack and extra bite attack if it gets a turn, but it probably won't kill a PC outright if they have Advantage. The Starter Kit also doesn’t include the rules for Disengaging, meaning that when the Troll flees there isn’t much the party can do to stop it.

This is an issue I have with this section from a Guidance standpoint, but not enough to take points off. I get that simplifying the combat rules is necessary for a starter set, but Outnumbering and Disengaging feel pretty important to me. Cutting the Two Weapon Fighting rules makes sense… except Else is all about jumping into combat with a pistol in one hand and pistol or sword in the other. I can’t find the rules for Magic. That sort of stuff.

Otherwise, I like this adventure from both standpoints. For Quality, I’d be pretty excited to run an adventure about essentially hunting down and killing an urban legend in a very Warhammer Fantasy way, and “the Baron thinks you’re investigating her and wants you to stop” is both a good red herring and a great way to introduce the local crime boss. I especially like how you don’t actually have to kill the troll to solve the problem, if you fight it witnesses will see you and corroborate your story. At that point it becomes an Altdorf military problem, but you still get credit for finding and fighting the creature. If you DO manage to kill it, your characters become local heroes on the Docks. My only knock from a Quality standpoint is that the red herrings don't give the Teufel Terror enough room to be a real presence before they find and fight it, but I strongly debated giving this a 5.

Besides my quibble about the rules, I have a few issues with the adventure from the Guidance standpoint. The main one is that the adventure book doesn’t offer much advice on what to do if the party becomes fixated on the Klumpenklug or Baron red herrings, and the clue with the troll vomit is potentially missable if nobody succeeds on the Perception test. These are easy pratfalls to navigate, but a new GM might not see them and be flustered if the party decides to hunt down The Baron or try to research the missing Watch members. The book does have a line warning you about this, but I think a few sentences on how you could redirect the players to the Teufel would have been helpful.

The book also seems to overestimate the danger of the river troll, suggesting that you skip Without A Trace completely as it may be too deadly and it risks killing the entire party. This is absolutely not true - the premade party is more than capable of handling a single troll, and at this point any character will have at least 1 Fate point to burn regardless of XP level. While burning Fate and losing Fortune rerolls is a big deal, one thing I really like about WFRP is that PCs get these free extra lives. Combat in this edition is very variable, extremely swingy, and can potentially turn deadly on any roll… but if the luck turns on a player, they have that trump card. In my opinion, THAT is what the book should be telling a new GM, not that they should pull their punches and skip one of the better parts of the adventure. It would have also been a good place to repeat the Fate and Resilience rules. Honestly, this makes me pretty concerned that the writers don’t understand their rules well enough. If you skip Without A Trace, the whole adventure book is significantly worse from a Quality and Guidance viewpoint. Hopefully most GMs will ignore that advice.

SInce this is getting a little long, I’ll talk about the second adventure A Secure Deal in another update.

Next time: Con men and a murderous bank vault

GimpInBlack
Sep 27, 2012

That's right, kids, take lots of drugs, leave the universe behind, and pilot Enlightenment Voltron out into the cosmos to meet Alien Jesus.
Night's Black Agents: Solo Ops

Part Five: I Spy

This is gonna be a short update, because these last couple of player-facing chapters are basically an "espionage 101" primer with no mechanics--but I want to have a clean break before we get into the GMing section next update.

Backstage Europe

This section is pretty much just a list, sorted by country, of the various national intelligence agencies active in Europe. It's certainly not exhaustive, but it covers a decent spread of Western European, Eastern European, and extra-European (including the US, China, and Iran) countries, with a brief description of their more prominent intelligence agencies and their specific remit. Given that the average player in the game's presumed target market probably has at best a passing understanding of US and maybe British intelligence, this is a useful quick reference for when the player says "hey, I want to call up an old contact of mine in Hungarian intelligence" and you want to know who she actually works for. It does, however, take pains to point out that, despite what you might have seen in movies, in real life there is no such thing as an "Interpol agent;" Interpol is a liason organization that helps actual police coordinate across jurisdictions, not an actual law enforcement body. Which is kind of an odd point to get all "well, ACKshually" about in a game about Jason Bourne versus goddamn Dracula, but who am I to judge?

A second subsection gives an even-briefer overview of criminal organizations active in Europe, including several terrorist organizations, Russian, Italian, and other national "mafias," and a miscellany of other criminal groups. These are at the level of "here's a name, do some research if you want more details," but again, it's a useful quick reference when you need to bullshit your way through a Streetwise push to figure out who to call to buy a crate of AK-47s and a kilo of black tar heroin, orfigure out what kind of muscle the vampire conspiracy might have suborned. Unfortunately, space constraints mean we don't get the high-level overview of various European cities that the original Night's Black Agents had, but in this day and age it's not that hard to google "(City Name) + organized crime" and get plenty of reference.

Tradecraft

It's one of the Investigative abilities the player starts with no matter what, so it's probably a good idea to give players who might not be spy story buffs a basic overview on the tricks of the trade. This is pretty much "baby's first covert op," and I don't mean that in a bad way. It's a good primer on things like methods of covert communication (the old "leave a red towel draped over your balcony rail and I'll know you want to meet"), brush passes and dead drops, flipping and running assets (the "MICE protocol" being the four principal reasons someone will turn traitor: Money, Ideology, Coercion, or Ego), and the like. The section on Truth Serum is way less confrontational about its "well, in reality..." than the Interpol section earlier: in the real world, some agencies do use barbituates including sodium thiopentol in interrogations. These drugs don't actually compel you to tell the truth, they just lower inhibitions and introduce a general feeling of relaxed well-being. It's not really that much different than getting them really drunk. In spy thrillers, on the other hand, one injection of "sodium pentothal" (which IRL is just a brand name for sodium thiopental, like how Advil is for ibuprofen) has lesser agents spilling their guts about anything and everything, while our heroes sweat a lot and grimace and somehow try to out-willpower the chemicals in their own brain. If you're going the spy thriller route, Pharmacy covers identifying truth serum and its effects, but not brewing it from scratch. If you want some, you'll have to break into an agency black site and steal some. Oh, and naturally, even a single drop of vampire blood entirely counteracts the effects of truth serum, so you're not gonna be dosing Dracula. Or Renfield, for that matter.

The Bucharest Rules
In traditional espionage stories, the semi-apocryphal "Moscow rules" were the rules allegedly followed by CIA operatives undercover in the USSR. The exact list is somewhat debated, but one of the more common lists goes like this:

The Moscow Rules posted:

  • Assume nothing.
  • Never go against your gut.
  • Everyone is potentially under opposition control.
  • Do not look back; you are never completely alone.
  • Go with the flow, blend in.
  • Vary your pattern and stay within your cover.
  • Lull them into a sense of complacency.
  • Do not harass the opposition.
  • Pick the time and place for action.
  • Keep your options open.

Those rules are a little staid for an espionage vampire-hunting action thriller, so Solo Ops proposes instead the Bucharest Rules:

The Bucharest Rules posted:

  • You can win
  • With Great Ability Scores Come Great Responsibility
  • When Stuck, Get More Intel
  • Follow the Money
  • HUMINT is Key
  • Build Your Own Network
  • Keep Moving Forward
  • Remember You're the Badass Here
  • Always Know Where the Exit Is

Definitely more meta and player-facing than rules for your PC to live by, but they basically boil down to "be active, don't play defensively, do cool poo poo, and interact with NPCs," all of which strikes me as very good advice for gaming in general, and especially one-on-one games.

Next Time: OPFOR.

GimpInBlack fucked around with this message at 20:15 on Apr 30, 2020

Night10194
Feb 13, 2012

We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Most single powerful enemies seem like they'll get totally hosed by Outnumber and Advantage. But then, single seemingly powerful enemies have always gotten hosed pretty hard in WHFRP regardless of edition.

MonsterEnvy
Feb 4, 2012

Shocked I tell you
A few things to remember about the Core Rules for fighting a troll.

It will cause Fear in all the characters. In order to outnumber you have to get into melee with the Troll. People that fail the fear test won't be able to engage the troll right away. Lastly if the troll activates deathblow if it makes any hits.

Night10194
Feb 13, 2012

We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Does the adventure path/starter kit slowly introduce these more specialized rules, like a tutorial? Because they're pretty core rules.

Everyone
Sep 6, 2019

by sebmojo

Night10194 posted:

Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 2e: Plundered Vaults

A confluence of bad influences
It's short, nobody makes any decisions, it's easy, and it's yet another Doomed Brutalized Woman story. Bela is insanely suspicious but it expects you to buy everything he sells, and constantly chides you for trying to investigate in a way that might discover any plot points early, despite you being unable to do anything about any of them. gently caress this adventure. If Sing for your Supper was a decent enough intro spoiled by its epilogue, this one is just poo poo all the way down.
The End

I admit that's the deal-breaker for me, even beyond the sheer stupidity of Bela deciding to break his own deal with the Skaven.

Still, as real introductions to dealing with Chaos go, this was pretty on-point. Chaos worshippers are powerful, but they're also insane. Usually stupidly, self-destructively insane. The main reason to hunt them instead of just letting them inevitably destroy themselves is all the collateral damage, like Juliette.

BTW, I had a weird thought regarding Anya's future career. What about Ice Witch? That's a +4 Magic career that immediately exits to Captain, itself a +2 Attacks career. Getting there is Ice Apprentice to Ice Maiden to Ice Witch. To enter the Ice Apprentice career you need to be neither Dwarf nor Halfling, have some basic winter gear and have a vagina, aka be female. And you can enter this career from any other one as long as you don't already have another Lore Divine, Arcane or Dark.

Also, how about following this group further, maybe after Mousillon and the Dwarves, they can follow The Lure of the Liche Lord.

Tibalt
May 14, 2017

What, drawn, and talk of peace! I hate the word, As I hate hell, all Montagues, and thee

MonsterEnvy posted:

A few things to remember about the Core Rules for fighting a troll.

It will cause Fear in all the characters. In order to outnumber you have to get into melee with the Troll. People that fail the fear test won't be able to engage the troll right away. Lastly if the troll activates deathblow if it makes any hits.
Sure, but PCs can use Resolve to ignore Psychology and the premade party all have pretty good Cool anyway. Also the Deathblow rule is optional in 4e, although it doesn't mention that under the Size rules.

Fun fact though, while looking at the Size rules for creatures in the core rulebook, I noticed that a creature can ignore the Disengage rules if they're fighting smaller creatures.

The fact that this corner case is mentioned under the Size rules, in the back of the Bestiary chapter, 200 pages away from the Disengage rules is pretty indicative of the problem I have with the core rulebook's layout and organization.

Night10194 posted:

Does the adventure path/starter kit slowly introduce these more specialized rules, like a tutorial? Because they're pretty core rules.
As far as I can tell, no, they streamlined combat to initiative, charging, advantage, and critical wounds. But i'm working off PDFs, so it's hard to flip through everything to check.

Tibalt fucked around with this message at 00:16 on May 1, 2020

Night10194
Feb 13, 2012

We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Everyone posted:

Also, how about following this group further, maybe after Mousillon and the Dwarves, they can follow The Lure of the Liche Lord.

Well, I already covered Lure of the Liche Lord. This team won't be going nearly that high on EXP, either. I think by the end of Karak Azgal they'll be just entering 3rd tier. Hell, the other team got that high partly as a mechanical joke and because they suggested what Careers you should be finishing. I like to make fun of the authors measuring progression by number of careers rather than amount of EXP because it's the kind of thing that leads to the hilariously mismatched and terrible canon party for Lure of the Liche Lord.

Cythereal
Nov 8, 2009

I love the potoo,
and the potoo loves you.

Everyone posted:

BTW, I had a weird thought regarding Anya's future career. What about Ice Witch? That's a +4 Magic career that immediately exits to Captain, itself a +2 Attacks career. Getting there is Ice Apprentice to Ice Maiden to Ice Witch. To enter the Ice Apprentice career you need to be neither Dwarf nor Halfling, have some basic winter gear and have a vagina, aka be female. And you can enter this career from any other one as long as you don't already have another Lore Divine, Arcane or Dark.

Getting an existing Ice Witch to teach you if you're not a Kislevite woman would probably be difficult, and it's hard to do ice magic below Kislev's latitudes except in the winter.

Everyone
Sep 6, 2019

by sebmojo

Cythereal posted:

Getting an existing Ice Witch to teach you if you're not a Kislevite woman would probably be difficult, and it's hard to do ice magic below Kislev's latitudes except in the winter.

Figure that getting a mentor is where adventures come in. "Perhaps I will teach you the ways of the Ice if you prove worthy. If."

And mechanically it seems that it's not so much harder as... less easy. If an Ice Witch/Maiden/etc is in winter conditions (like Kislev is most of the time) they automatically get the "components" advantage. Otherwise, they're treated pretty much like any other normal mage.

Night10194
Feb 13, 2012

We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

They have to spend a half action channeling before every spell, adding an extra action to it, if you're using the full rules. Also, Ice Magic's miscast tables are brutal and I'm trying to keep the team from being too combat heavy, and Ice is about on par with Bright as just being a pure combat Lore, fluff stuff aside. Heavens is there because it's utility primarily. They have 2 heavy knights already, they don't really need more killing power.

LatwPIAT
Jun 6, 2011

GimpInBlack posted:

quote:

When Stuck, Get More Intel

I wonder if you can do something like a PbtA trigger here: literally have Moves that trigger when players start bogging down in hypothetical from few clues. The response pyramid even tells you which results can populate a list of things that happen, though I'm fond of "a man with a gun walks in the door" as an option for what should happen when someone gets bogged down in vague clues.

Everyone
Sep 6, 2019

by sebmojo

Night10194 posted:

Well, I already covered Lure of the Liche Lord. This team won't be going nearly that high on EXP, either. I think by the end of Karak Azgal they'll be just entering 3rd tier. Hell, the other team got that high partly as a mechanical joke and because they suggested what Careers you should be finishing. I like to make fun of the authors measuring progression by number of careers rather than amount of EXP because it's the kind of thing that leads to the hilariously mismatched and terrible canon party for Lure of the Liche Lord.

That just seems idiotic. The person who goes from Peasant to Dung Collector to Sewer Jack and the person who goes from Sailor to Navigator to Sea Captain are both technically in their third careers, but these people really should not be in the same adventuring party. One of them is either going to die quickly or just "Avast me hardies" her way through butchering all opposition.

Are there any other adventures you've yet to run? Maybe some of the one-shots from the various source-books? I like this bunch and I want to spend more time with them. I love how Gilbert is totally crushing on Ulrike (who either hasn't noticed or considers it to be irrelevant). I'm also hugely invested in Anya and Karl, who had to go through so much (literal) poo poo in The Thousand (porcelain?) Thrones.

Night10194
Feb 13, 2012

We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

If you look at the Liche Lord review, their Fighter in the pre-made party has thousands less EXP than their Explorer because he's only ever done 1st tier Fighter careers, meaning one of the critical roles on a team is extremely weak, undergeared (he's wearing a mail shirt and leather jack, with no armor on his legs or head) and basically unable to overcome any serious combat challenge in what's intended to be a 3rd tier adventure for advanced PCs. It's pretty hilarious.

Karak Azgal is a fairly long series of adventures, and Barony of the Damned is a full minicampaign. There's a lot to go yet.

Jerik
Jun 24, 2019

I don't know what to write here.
Yeah, I agree that the terrific characters you're putting through these adventures are making the reviews a lot more readable and entertaining than they would be otherwise. (I mean, not that just an analysis of the adventures' flaws couldn't be entertaining on its own, but the characters definitely help.) I posted at the time you were starting the Thousand Thrones review that I thought it was a pity that such fun characters were going to be wasted on a terrible adventure, but I can't say I'm disappointed with what you did with them, bringing them through the adventure in one piece in an engaging way and even giving them suitable epilogues at the end. (The only thing that makes me a little sad is poor Nils; I know he wasn't a PC, but he seems like the only likeable major NPC in the whole accursed adventure, and he deserved better than an ignominious and meaningless offscreen death. Then again, given that the PCs never saw him die (or even heard anything about what happened to him, unless Father Johannes told them), and since other things in the Thousand Crowns' adventures didn't go exactly the way they were "supposed to" as written (Katarine's joining the party being a notable example), I guess there's no reason we can't assume that Nils escaped his written fate as well and went off to have a good life somewhere.)

Seriously, looking forward to the continuing adventures of our current team of heroes. You're doing a great job with these reviews.

The Lone Badger
Sep 24, 2007

Technically Gilbert should have been stuck as a maxed-out Knight Errant until he gets home and is granted a fief, right?

Joe Slowboat
Nov 9, 2016

Higgledy-Piggledy Whale Statements



I just finished a read-through of Ultra Violet Grasslands, and it was a fun weird trip. Is someone doing an F&F of that already? I'm not sure I would be up for it but it was a fascinating read and I'm definitely stealing some locations and ideas, if not the overall Weird OSR setting, since I already play my own hack of Troika! and that's a sometimes food.

E: Immediately after I posted this I looked at the front matter of one of the books in the bundle, and the acknowledgements include a dedication to Zak Sabbath. Motherfuckers, what a loving kick to the teeth.

EE: With a bit more digging, I've discovered that the author has utterly disavowed Zak S, and the dedication was from the prototype, not the current model of the game. Still, kick to the teeth.

Joe Slowboat fucked around with this message at 07:40 on May 1, 2020

GimpInBlack
Sep 27, 2012

That's right, kids, take lots of drugs, leave the universe behind, and pilot Enlightenment Voltron out into the cosmos to meet Alien Jesus.

I wonder if you can do something like a PbtA trigger here: literally have Moves that trigger when players start bogging down in hypothetical from few clues. The response pyramid even tells you which results can populate a list of things that happen, though I'm fond of "a man with a gun walks in the door" as an option for what should happen when someone gets bogged down in vague clues.
[/quote]

You certainly could, I would probably handle that with the take time mechanic. Basically, just tell the player, " look, if you keep sitting around Theory crafting about what might be happening, that's going to count as taking time doing Intel analysis and you're going to face blowback." And then gently remind them of any clues they might not have followed up on yet or forgotten about.

Night10194
Feb 13, 2012

We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

The Lone Badger posted:

Technically Gilbert should have been stuck as a maxed-out Knight Errant until he gets home and is granted a fief, right?

Yes, but their very next adventure is him getting his fief, so he jumped the line slightly. Hence why they're going to Bretonnia.

E: Also, yes, I like to assume Nils is fine. Though he's meant to have died off screen unless he joined the PCs.

Night10194 fucked around with this message at 12:54 on May 1, 2020

Everyone
Sep 6, 2019

by sebmojo

Night10194 posted:

Yes, but their very next adventure is him getting his fief, so he jumped the line slightly. Hence why they're going to Bretonnia.

While it probably happened "off-screen," figure that part of the process of Anya becoming an Apprentice Wizard was her apply to the Imperial College of Magic and giving them her background - including her hosed up family situation. With her mom under Shallyan care, Dad and brother dead, other brother crazy, a sister who's undead and another one who's likely on the run from guards and/or witch hunters for soliciting murder, Anya kind of inherits the family estate.

There could be a bit of intrigue with pressure being put on her and Gilbert to marry and "acquire" his fief that way.

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

Zereth
Jul 9, 2003



Night10194 posted:

If you look at the Liche Lord review, their Fighter in the pre-made party has thousands less EXP than their Explorer because he's only ever done 1st tier Fighter careers,
Is there any reason an actual player would ever want to do this instead of going up tiers as soon as possible?

  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
  • Post
  • Reply