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.
Thursday, 16 December 2010
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.
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.
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.
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)
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)
Friday, 10 December 2010
A Dark Heresy Campaign
I've decided to start blogging about the Dark Heresy campaign I'm running and related thoughts and ideas about all things Roleplay.
My campaign started as an Idea I had while at the Student Roleplaying Nationals at Herriot Watt University. I was envious of long running campaigns that I had hear people talking about, fed up of the 6month to a year long games that I was playing in at GEAS (Edinburgh University's roleplaying society) which had a nasty habit of falling apart after a while with no real end and so I thought about what I could do to get the roleplaying fix I was after.
I decided that I wanted to create a campaign and really put the effort in to have a decent plot arc in mind before I started and I wanted to cherry pick my players. I settled on a Dark Heresy game and better yet I would see if I could get two groups to play, each getting one or two games a month and interacting from opposite ends of the Radical-Puritan spectrum of Inquisitorial philosophy.
Alas this wasn't to happen. I couldn't find enough players that wanted to play and were happy to recommend each other as people they wanted to play with. I decided to scrap the logistical nightmare of an idea and settle for a group of radicals. This however had a silver lining, I had been preparing plot thinking I'd need two distinct threads of plot and now I only needed one.
In the end I have found myself with six players. One Arbitrator, one Scum (Cold Guild courier), one Tech-priest (malgris codex), one Guardsman (Penal Legion) and two Assassins (one of them a Mortiat). They work for Inquisitor Ahmazzi who you can find in the back of teh core Dark Heresy book and whom I have decided is a Xanthite.
Tune in soon for more...
My campaign started as an Idea I had while at the Student Roleplaying Nationals at Herriot Watt University. I was envious of long running campaigns that I had hear people talking about, fed up of the 6month to a year long games that I was playing in at GEAS (Edinburgh University's roleplaying society) which had a nasty habit of falling apart after a while with no real end and so I thought about what I could do to get the roleplaying fix I was after.
I decided that I wanted to create a campaign and really put the effort in to have a decent plot arc in mind before I started and I wanted to cherry pick my players. I settled on a Dark Heresy game and better yet I would see if I could get two groups to play, each getting one or two games a month and interacting from opposite ends of the Radical-Puritan spectrum of Inquisitorial philosophy.
Alas this wasn't to happen. I couldn't find enough players that wanted to play and were happy to recommend each other as people they wanted to play with. I decided to scrap the logistical nightmare of an idea and settle for a group of radicals. This however had a silver lining, I had been preparing plot thinking I'd need two distinct threads of plot and now I only needed one.
In the end I have found myself with six players. One Arbitrator, one Scum (Cold Guild courier), one Tech-priest (malgris codex), one Guardsman (Penal Legion) and two Assassins (one of them a Mortiat). They work for Inquisitor Ahmazzi who you can find in the back of teh core Dark Heresy book and whom I have decided is a Xanthite.
Tune in soon for more...
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