Saturday, August 2, 2014

Warhammer FRPG: Thousand Thrones Sidequest and Infighting

Looks at blog... last post was last week. In the meanwhile I've read the last of the Dresden Files books that I own. I think it was like up to book seven or something. I'll either hit the library or the used book store because when I buy seven volumes for $1.99 each and see the next one at like $7 bones or something... pass!

Yesterday's game involved much iced coffee as well as some 'generic' chips from Sam's Club. It's a huge bag, like 24 ounces, and we couldn't actually finish it. But we did manage to knock out one of those dips, and I believe it was the cheese one. The Star Bucks iced coffee was pretty good. Since the alcohol consumption is still at zero these many weeks, coffee must replace it!

The game was delayed because we joke way too much. I don't have a problem with it mind you because I'm one of the people doing the joking. This is in a way bad though because I only see these guys the one time a week and I only RPG one time a week, most weeks. So the desire to socialize and talk trash wages war against my desire to sling some dice.

One of the funny things though, is that last week the player told the Game Master something that amounted to not knowing how certain things would effect the characters and the Game Master was like, "But I'm the GM. Of course I know" which has lead to us calling him "Tom Snow" and telling him, "Tom Snow, you know nothing." We'll probably burn that meme out in a week or three. 

The game itself though was a mix of slog, side quest, and death!

My dwarf giant slayer has been suffering from yellow fever and I was down -25 on all primary stats. If my Toughness hit 0, I'd die. Well, use a fate point but the GM thought it'd be a good opportunity to throw some Skaven at us in a side quest. The quest for herbs!

Unfortunately, one of the other players, the one playing the sniper elf, decided to try and take a potion to reduce his insanity points. It instead knocked him flat out. Our bright wizard, who the elf has constantly ribbed and even shot and killed once when the bright wizard was possessed (fate point!), has held a grudge against him since that time.

So the bright wizard takes the elf and throws him in the stables. Where hs is promptly robbed. On one hand, I suppose that the guy playing the elf is lucky that the GM didn't tell him that he lost a fate point and had his throat slit. On the other, the guy playing the bright wizard didn't want anything 'bad' to happen to the elf and just thought it would bruise his ego.

But in Warhammer, gold and magic items are not like they are in Dungeons and Dragons where even low level adventurers are swimming with filthy lucre and magic. The lose of over sixty gold crowns REALLY pissed off the guy playing the elf, who honestly, hasn't liked the other guy as a person in the entirety of the campaign.

Upon awakening the elf tries to find his money with some gossip tests and some fellowship tests and discover who dragged him into the stables. He then tries to steal his money back from the wizard at night.

I personally can't stand that whole interparty war nonsense. I can do all of that much better and more efficient online. I asked both players flat out if this was how it was going to go and they seemed pretty determined to do it until the wizard woke up during the robbery attempt at which point they actually talked out the differences to apparently both of their satisfaction.

Which made me very happy because like I said, for most 'standard' games I'm playing in, unless it's directly about politics or inner circle things where the party isn't part of the same group, it's just not my thing.

So there was some other nonsense going on, but eventually we went off to search for herbs to cure my disease and it was then that we encountered a large group of skaven.

For those who don't know, skaven are rat men. They are one of the most original things I think that Games Workshop added to the greater body of fantasy. They are technologists, psychopaths, ninjas, masters of genetic manipulation and so much more.

And we had to fight a few of the rat ogres, ninjas, handlers and lots of the slaves. Thankfully there were no wizards or warp stone cannons.

But that didn't matter. I forget which one caused fear, and with my penalties to primary stats, I blew my roll. Now mind you, I'd already shaven my head because of running away from a bloody room. My fellows joked that I'd have to shave my body after this.

What's worse, as I'd never healed up from the previous fight, I took two negative wounds, and each one was essentially knocked down. At one point the rat ogre used me as a boulder against the bright wizard.

Unfortunately for the bright wizard, the rat ogre then closed into melee. On his two attacks, he rolled a 10 for damage the first time, and a 10 for damage the second time. Unlike me, his critical hit resulted in death and well, he'd already burned through three fate points before that night, so the rat ogre essentially beat him to death with his own limbs.

Eventually the rest of the skaven fled when we killed the handlers and the rat ogres and at that point, we managed to make it back into town where I was cured of my yellow fever. 

So now the player of the bright wizard is unto character three of the campaign while almost everyone else is at character one.

Oh well, the GM is off next week so it'll be a few weeks before the campaign gets updated. That's assuming he decided to pick it up.

We killed the mutant boy last week and one of the options for the campaign at this point is "Hey, good job. Campaign over."

And guess whose next up to run? Yup, that'd be me. A Hero 6th edition campaign with a build of 500 points... already seen a few characters but I'm stealing a page from Fate and making the players tell me what type of campaign they want to run by having them decide the menace now and the menace to come as well as some of the NPCs, etc....

It seems to me that those elements from Fate can be used in any role playing game and function well to bring the player's a bit more into the campaign and setting than just telling them, "Here's what's up!"

Anyone else steal that methodology and if so, how did it work?

Here's to hoping the next game runs smoother and starts earlier!

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