Friday, 11 February 2011

How to change gear?

So the game so far has largely been Inquisitor says go here, investigate this and deal with anything heretical that you find. This is all well and good but gets boring after a while and doesn't do the vast and complex setting that is 40K justice. I've always been moving towards an ascension game with this campaign and hopefully a long term one at that. With this in mind I've been keep a track of how close the party is to getting their first point of influence.

Well they have gotten it. It's mostly based on the good graces of their inquisitor but having done well in a number of missions the party have proven themselves to be worth his time. With that in mind and a major plot reveal in the form of the Seven Devils I've been thinking about how to change the focus of the game from short investigations followed by liberal application of violence and then an interrogation of any survivors to something longer term and intricate. I'm hoping that the shear number of leads they need to dig up and people they need to get help from will result in some complex politics.

Currently the parties set objectives are to track down any and all information they can on the Seven Devil's. Sessions nine and ten saw them have a brief run in with the Logicians as well and they have a secondary objective of finding out what they are up to. Now that gives them eight objects of inquiry with very few leads. Session eleven was taken up mostly with some securing of their power bases, putting out initial feelers for starting points and ransacking the the parts of the libraries in the Tricorn palace and Bastion serpentis that the PCs are allowed into. Praetus fluffed a "how corruption is reading this book" roll and now has drawn the attention of the Radiant King earning him a fate point and a whole world of pain to come. He also made uses of this new connection to chaos to perform some improvised warp sorcery. As he hadn't spent any XP on this I made it extra dangerous with 8 counting as 9 for the purpose of warp phenomena. He was lucky in that roll but drew the attention of the Oblationist acolyte sent to watch the PCs who decided he was too corrupt and tried to assassinate him.

Ahmazzi has suggested they talk to Inquisitor Bray who is the for most expert on the Seven Devils and Inquisitor Marr who is known to be an expert on Prophecy. Both are going to need favours in return which should prove interesting I think as by working for them they should earn some new enemies.

We're gaining a new player as well. With Panglos gone and Garvel rarely played We're getting Tauron, a Noble Adept Bonded Emissary. This addition should help shift things to a more social/political style of game. I may invite another player but I think getting one settled into the group first is best.

Well that's enough rambling from me

Wednesday, 26 January 2011

Events so far part four

Been a while but without further ado I shall recount the exploits of the acolytes through sessions seven and eight.

In session seven The acolytes were tasked with moving Clinch, the psychic boy to a remote town called Hopeless in the wastelands of Scintilla as the facility that he had been at had been attacked by rival Inquisitor Antonia Mesmerson.

Ahmazzi set on passage with a land train for the acolytes but wisely they chose to travel by car on an alternative route. On route they were attacked by a band of raiders but they were able to out drive them and the raiders primative weapons weren't able to harm the chimera they were using as transport.

As they made there way towards Hopeless they came across the wreck of the land train they should have been on, ravaged by some kind of beast.

Finally arriving in Hopeless they discovered a commontion in the centre town. Moving to investigate they discovered that a wise woman, the very agent they were to deliver Clinch to had been killed in the night. The Villagers recommended that they avoid her house. While the villagers argued about of they should burn the house for it had been touched by vile spirits or to reclaim the house as a good house is too valuable to destroy the Acolytes convinced the guards at the door that one of their number was a holy man and could cleanse the house. Entering the house they were confronted with a gruesome scene, entrails and gore splattered all over the kitchen/dinning room. Plex and Clinch were overcome by the horror of it and fled the scene. While they recovered the others searched the building and discovered a note sent to the wise woman by Ahmazzi instructing her to move Clinch to the 'Tenebra Instillation' Melody also discovered enough supplies to pentagramatically warp a weapon six times. She promptly warded her sword and the inside of the chimeria.

Returning to the Chimera the acolytes voxed Ahmazzi asking for instructions and received a telepathic reply instructing them to move Clinch to the 'Tenebra Instilation' and the co-ordinates at which they could find it

Suspecting an attack the acolytes made there way back to the land train wreck and waited. Sure enough two demonic shadowy dog like creatures charged down from a dune. Aeind froze in terror at the sight of them, Plex found himself unable to harm them with his autogun leaving the bulk of the fighting to Melody (the other players not being present)

Melody chipped away at one of the daemons until it managed to land a pair of blows, instantly dropping her and forcing a fate point to be burnt. Luckily they had the warding on the chimera as Plex was able to duck inside and when the daemons tried to enter they failed to push through the wards. Two failed instability checks later the daemons are gone.

The final act before the session came to an end was for Plex to arrange a bodyguard of raiders to take them across the wastes.

In session eight
The acolytes made there way into the jungle wastes bodyguarded by raiders. A few failed scrutiny and awareness checks later they eventually noticed something was up when Clinch went missing. The Acolytes quickly rallied and set off in pursuit taking some of the raiders with them. The tracking led them past some storm troopers in cameleoline coated armour.

As the Acolytes caught up with the kidnappers they turned to fight. The lead kidnapper summoned fourth two daemon, the same large shadow-hounds from the previous session. This time however the acolytes didn't have the warded chimera to hide behind. The battle was fierce, Melody tackled the kidnapping cultists while Praetus and Aeind attempted to fend of the daemons. Aeind didn't fair so well and ended up out of the fight having burnt a after point and Praetus was badly hurt, barely having damaged the daemons. Just as things were looking bleak the storm troopers they had spotted before turned up and tackled the daemons for them.

The storm troopers worked for Inquisitor Mesmeron and it was only through quick action and some lucky dice rolls on Melodies part that the acolytes managed to keep ahold of Clinch.

The Storm troopers 'escorted' Praetus and Aeind to a near by town setting the acolytes journey a few days but after that it was plain sailing to the Inquisition facility.

The facility was an 'official' looking grim rockcreate building heavily guarded and staffed by adepts, scribes, and tech-priests. Inside was a collection of labs, cells and storerooms housing a collection of malefic artifacts, daemonhosts and other unsavoury objects.

The final act of the session was for the acolytes to be shown a prophecy describing how the 'Seven Devils of Fel Calyx' will bring ruin and death to the sector.

Thursday, 16 December 2010

How far is too far?

I was just reading a post to a forum that was relating things say by one of the developers of Dark Heresy. Apparently he thinks that Inquisitors would pretty much give Acolytes whatever gear they are qualified to use. There income is basically for if they want better quality gear, really rare things, don't want their inquisitor to know they have it. He went as far to say that a character at rank one with power armour and a bolter wasn't as ridiculous as it seems at first as they wont be rank one for long.

A keep part of what I think he was getting at is that people enjoy games when they get to do cool things and have their moment in the spotlight etc. As long as everyone gets to have their moment then everyone will be happy and the game will be enjoyable and memorable.

This got me thinking about how far you go with this? How often do you say yes to whatever crazy scheme or desire it is that your players have? I tend to be pretty liberal with this having spent a long time running Exalted which is the say yes game. That is to say you say yes to just about anything the players want to do and then just hit them with the consequences (which they then ignore being superhuman demigods)

Already in Radicals and Puritans I have given the players the option of learning warp sorcery. All they have to do is read a couple of books they have and pick up a few corruption points. I'm even planning to let the tech-priest learn it f he wants (which I'm pretty sure he does)

And the Guardsman has a heavy stubber, not the most powerful heavy weapon but it makes a big mess of most heretics.

How this effects the style, feel and enjoyability of the game is yet to fully be seen but I think it will work out and ultimately I don't think any piece of equipment the players could possibly have, nor any skill or power is going to stop them having to face down things bigger than them and deal with the dilemmas that they will have to face. (A power can't help you decide if you should destroy a whole planet to make sure the daemon is really dead)

Anyway, next time I shall give a summery of the seventh game so you can be all up to date on what has been going on.

Wednesday, 15 December 2010

Setting up a campaign

A major part of the inspiration for running this campaign comes from the tales of a campaign that is a bit of a local legend around GEAS. There was a campaign that had gone on for years and years, with more players taking part at various time in it's history than you could shake a stick at. Politics and adventure and all the really good stuff that you want from a game. I wanted that.

So I took what OOC rule I knew of that this game ran under and adopted them as my own. Pretty much this comes down to you can play in the game if you're vouched for by a player already in the game. GM has no say in who plays.

Now obviously I had to invite the initial players and when the first few I invited didn't have any real idea who else they wanted to play with I got enough other players involved to get the game going. But now that it is, these are the rules.

The other thing I knew I needed to do was have a clearly set out story arc. I'm terrible at doing this. I tend to have a very vague idea of a single scene and figure out how to get that scene to happen. And then players happen to my plans and those scenes never happen anyway. This time I was going to put in the work. And I have. I'm maybe a third of the way through the plots I have already written. I still have to do prep between games and unexpected stuff happens or the next plot I was going to use doesn't fee quite right for the party yet etc but I have plot waiting to be used and so if an adventure comes to and end before I expect it to I have back up plots. It's making running the game much more enjoyable and much easier.

Some other stuff has come up since the game started as well. Two house rules and a tool that I'm still trying to get used by the players.

House rules so far...
Accurate basic weapons to additional dice of damage for every three degrees of success not every two. It just makes more sense once you realise how easy it is to get that sniper shot up to 80 - 90% chance to hit.

Fullauto fire can only allocate three hits to any one target. Larger targets can have extra hits allocated and smaller targets less to a minimum of one. Again this is to stop Fullauto just being the only sensible way to fight. It's still a massive advantage but not such a big one that people using single shot weapons can't compete.

Both of these rules were recommended to me by one of my players who has been running Dark Heresy pretty much since it came out and is a fantastic GM. I thought about the for quite a while but in the end they just made sense.

The other thing I'm trying to get going is a wiki for the game. I was inspired by the wiki for the Rogue Trader game I'm playing in which is fantastic. It has so much stuff on it it's slightly scary. Almost all the characters have pages, the ship has a page, four of the characters have IC logs detailing the events of the game. It adds a massive amount to it. Unfortunately I'm not getting as much buy in from my players, even with XP rewards for putting up backgrounds and such like they just aren't going for it with as much enthusiasm.

Tuesday, 14 December 2010

Events so far part three

In which I will recall the events of sessions five and six.

I was expecting session five to largely centre around the party kicking down doors and busting mutant heads. I'd made sure I had stats for all the cult and made some grids for keeping track of things should combat happen.

However for various reasons all of the combat focused characters (~half of the characters are primarily built for killing things what with a guardsman and two assassins)

So instead the PCs who were available did some more research. They already knew that Darrius himself has a talent for escape and for not being as dead as he seems but they knew very little about the rest of the cult. They managed to discover that he had four main cronies and another six hangers on but that he was normally only found with the core group with the hangers on being sent off to do various jobs.

They also found out that there was a growing pro-mutant movement brewing in the underhive of Hive Tarsus. The rest of the session was spent infiltrating the mutant sympathisers and seeing what they could find out about them. It was an interesting enough session but felt a bit like filler as really the party needed to be kicking ass and taking names.

Session six was what session five should have been. The party set up a sniper on the front door of the bar that Darrius hides in and then went around the back to kick the door in. A fluffed roll left Garvel (the guardsman) down a wound and the door not open. Luckily the noise just brought a mutant to the door wanting to know what they wanted. Plex tried to talk his way in but without success and Panglos got board and charged. Seeing the rest of the mutants make a break for it Melody and Plex ran around to the front of the bar. This resulted in the fight being split in half. Panglos and Garvel fighting one mook mutant in the back, Plex and Melody fighting Darrius, two hulking Mutants and a mook mutant in the front with pot shots being made by Praetus from across the street. despite having two of the most powerful combatants fighting a single mook in the back it took the many rounds to take him out. Mean while Plex failed his fear test and ran for it when he came face to face with Darrius (Fear 2 is so lovely) This left Melody to fend for her self. Unfortunately I had armed my mutants with Renders. These are pretty nice weapons except when faced with any amount of body armour and despite having SB of 4 they couldn't harm her. Darrius was dropped into his 'run for it' zone in one hit and started trying to pull of some sorcery to escape but couldn't pass any of his invocation roles which he needed to do to get the sorcery to work as he just didn't have enough dice of power to leave it to chance.

Some great shots by Praetus and a burst from a heavy stubber latter and all bar one mutant are dead. Darrius escapes due to having timeless and destiny writ in shadows as dark pacts, a combination that is going to make it very very hard for the PCs to take him out but then he is meant to be a major player by dint of simple resilience.

The adventure basically over at this point they report into Ahmazzi and I award them bonus XP for finishing part one of the campaign. The stage is set for bigger things to start happening.

Monday, 13 December 2010

Events so far part two

Now for the second part of my catch up summery of events so far in which I will recall the events of sessions three and four.

In session three the party went looking for the people who were to become the Assassin (named Ribbon) from the chalice of Zeals's new employer. Under interrogation he had revealed that he was to meet with a man named Darrius Vrake. Knowing that that Ribbon was likely a member of the chaos cult the Brotherhood of the Horned Darkness the Party thought it best to see who his new employer was to be and what they would put an assassin to work with.

Plex and Melody turned up at the meeting place, an underhive bar and some very successful fast talking by Plex meant they convinced the door and to let them through to the back and get themselves employed by a Cabal of hideous mutants. Darrius wanted them to does a minor noble with the contents of a vile he provided them with.

In an attempt to find out what was significant about this minor noble they did some digging into records and asked around some contacts they had. It turned out that the Noble belonged to a family known as Farnalese who had formed an alliance with some other house including Warwick, the house that the officer on the Chalice of Zeal had belonged to, in order to try and do their part to stamp out corruption on Scintilla. An evil Chaos cult would obviously benefit from this going wrong. What's more they discovered that House Farnalese was struggling with a scandal as numerous members were suffering from disfiguring mutations.

At the same time as this they discovered that a new combat drug had hit the streets of the underhive allowing the people who took it to develop temporary mutations.

While all this was happening Panglos was off mingling with nobles and managed to get himself into a world of trouble when he woke up in the House of a Sinderfell and decided it would be a good idea to steal from him. Fluffing his roles to get out unnoticed he was captured, interrogated and made to promise to report on the party to one Julius Sinderfell.

When Panglos met up with the rest of the party he instantly told them what had happened where upon they were attacked by four snipers. The battle was fierce but the main injuries to the party was caused by friendly fire when Melody was dropped into critical hits from an autogun burst from Plex while she was in melee combat with one of the snipers.

In session four they set about enacting their plan to avoid blowing their cover with Darrius without poisoning the noble. Plex managed to talk him into making a show of rushing of to his secluded estate and not leaving for a while. At least at first the noble was delighted finding the whole thing to be an interesting game to play and did his part wonderfully. With that done they set about discovering what the poison was and working on a plan to take down Darrius. Melody mean while was recovering from her injuries from the last session.

They ran the poison through some advanced auspex arrays loaned to them by the Divine Light of Sollex having made allies of one of their number who had been on the target list of Ribbon. The results were unsettling as they discovered they had been asked to administer a mixture of blood, oil and herbs that were slightly psyho-reactive. Wanting to know more about what t was they acquired a manual labour servitor and gave it the does. The results... It's flesh all melted away into goo.

While this was going on Plex scouted out the bar where Darrius and his cult meet and located all the back ally's and other such secret passages so that when they assaulted the place they would know what routes to cover.

There ends sessions three and four.

Saturday, 11 December 2010

Events so far

Last night I ran the seventh session of my Campaign so by way of some context for the events I'm going to give a summery of what has happened so far starting with sessions one and two.

The first session had the party sent to investigate a young boy who was being held in custody on the voidship Chalice of Zeal. The boy was reportedly a witch and had powers of prophecy. They arrive on the ship to discover that the boy has been beaten unconscious because he freaked the guards out with one of his visions. They waited till he came around and spoke to him, getting some details of his visions. He claimed that one of teh officers was going to be killed and that the blade was draw the wrong way. The party set of to investigate this only to discover that the officer was already dead. The crew of the ship were blaming a death cult who made their home on the ship and who they tolerated because they only targeted those members of the crew who were lacks in their duty to the God-Emperor. They spent the rest of the session trying to track down who the killer was. Speaking to the death cult they learned that it wasn't them as the killer had made some small mistake n his attempt  to make it look like them. The crew not understanding the proper ranking structure of a voidship had some strange customs which made them think it could be various bridge officers trying to advance in rank and power and this is where we left off.

The second session saw the conclusion of the investigation into the killings. Clinch, the rogue psyker had another vision of a new victim and when the party checked she was still alive. They waited for a day in the most likely route the assassin would take to get to her but no-one turned up. Some investigation later they had one of the crew who was rather suspicious in a bar and Panglos (an insane and blood thirsty noble assassin) engineered a duel of honour with the man. He pulled a pistol, Panglos pulled an autogun. the result was a rather badly injured assassin who fled. Unlucky for him Plex (a low born smuggler) caught him on the run and blew his head off with a burst from his autopistol.

These two session had given the party a bit of time to get used to each others characters, gain some xp so they weren't floundering quite so much and allowed me to seed some stuff for future games (tune in for the return of Clinch the Seer in session seven)