A Thousand Thrones: Ended

So after many months, we finished the Thousand Thrones.

It broke down to an encounter with an ancient hag trying to use one of our allies as a 'power source' to take over the world.

Half of us attacked the hag, who had a force field around her. The other half attempted to awaken our friend.

It was the ones who awoke our friend who wound up winning the fight.

The biggest problem we had at the end was that the last section was a 'Dungeon Crawl' and well, Warhammer isn't Dungeons and Dragons. One of the traps managed to almost kill everyone. A few random rolls that hit the damage reroll can quickly bypass toughness and armor points to bring down someone who has, say 19 wounds to say 2.

A big part of the 'problem' our group had was just not being prepared for that whole crawl. We lacked a priest and had no healer and no healing potions or poultices or anything of that nature. We also had a lot of bad rolls in some areas.

Overall though, the GM did a great job of keeping us moving through the whole thing. Could the adventure have been far more upfront about what the end goals were? Sure. Was it worth playing in? Yup.

So next up is a quick game called Ninja Burger. I've never played that one before. After that I'm taking my 5th edition Player's Handbook and Monster Manual and doing some on the fly conversions for Emerald Spire and Thornhold as well as some River Kingdoms bits that I have for the Pathfinder setting and see how that goes for a while.

I am disappointed though that the Dungeon Master's Guide has been pushed back. And that WoTC is licensing things off to Gale Force 9. Not that I think that there's anything wrong with the quality of GF9's products. I have a ton of their 4th edition stuff including the big box of Dungeon Master things as well as a lot of their miniatures.

It's just GF9 is not a timely company. I'm hoping we get that DMG screen before 2015 for example.

Anyway, that was many months of campaigning and we bought the GM a cake from Sam's Club with the cover of the product on it. It was great and less than $20 for a half sheet which easily feed like six of us so I'd recommend it to anyone wanting to reward their GM with a quick thank you that's affordable and gives the group some tasty treats.

Anyone else make it through the Thousand Thrones? Any specific quips or memories? Would you recommend it for someone else?

In looking at Pathfinder, any specific things to watch for while doing my on the fly conversions? Mind you I'm reading everything ahead of time and have already started taking notes. The low armor classes and other bits in the Monster Manual have stuck out in their simple stat blocks versus the Pathfinder ones.

Any River Kingdoms resources outside of Thornhold and Emerald Spire I should be aware of? I already have the people and the gazetteer books on the River Folk as well as the old King Maker adventure path so I think I'm pretty well covered.

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!

Warhammer FRPG Thousand Thrones Snack Attack Recap

This week was particularly strange. One of my gaming friends died. His mom called me up because my number was in his phone. The memorial service was... not to my taste although I can see it's benefit to the mom. Hung out with several friends way too late and because it was a work day, didn't have a drop of alcohol.

Heck, because of the last attack of gout, I haven't had any alcohol in about a month now. Ugh. Sobriety is not to my liking.

A few of my gaming amigo's friends got together after the memorial and talked about the guy. It was interesting in that for a few of us, including me mind you, that he was so quite, there wasn't a lot we could add to the conversation. For me, it was interesting to hear about the guy's life and what he did when he wasn't around.

In terms of the type of gamer he was, he was a min-maxer. Mind you he learned, as many people do, that what looks fantastic on paper, doesn't necessarily work out in the game. I remember a 'side quest' the group was running during a Shackled City campaign I was running for 3.5 that allowed people a lot of free range in what they could use. He had a mojh magister. This is a dragon man spellcaster and he had some unique bits to him.

In this side quest, it was one of the Goodman Games Dungeon Crawl Classics where I put a magic item that the group was researching. In a random encounter the party encountered some drow with a pslelcaster and the drow won initiative, the spellcaster hit out with a fireball that did almost max damage, and well, that magister was toasted.

Stuff like that never discouraged him though. He just went back to the drawing board to work out what his next masterwork would be.

Some thought him a little... rule lawyer like too. I particularly never had that issue with him, but at the 'peak' my my 3.5 days, I could probably recite whole passages of the game system without needing to reference the book. I also made sure to have handouts of what the changes were to the core rules at the start of the game so there were rarely moments where someone would go, "I didn't know you did that, otherwise I would have..."

One of the reasons so few of us knew anything about him, is outside of making characters and showing up to game, even in the game, he was quite. It wasn't that he couldn't role play or that he didn't engage when spoken with, he just didn't volunteer a lot of that of himself at any particular time. If an NPC had questions for him, he had answers and had no problem role playing out the encounter. If someone asked him how he was doing, he'd talk about it, but they were short answers. He was there to game, to see the mechanics of one part of the system clash with another part.

It sound stupid I'm sure, but one of the things that I'm going to miss about him is seeing him apply that analytic mind to the new edition of Dungeons and Dragons.

It was nice to have his other friends around to talk about him and the characters he made and some of the goofy mistakes he made and for me, it was great learning a little more about the man behind the mechanics.

Still, even without alcohol, being out past ten lead me to be exhausted the next day at work and the following day, which was game day. So I pulled out some different snacks to help me overcome.

Now this was one tasty beverage. One of my friends brought a coconut coffee something or other last week and it was good. This wasn't as sweet being far more espresso and coconut, which in and of itself isn't really that sweet, but hey, two of these and I was good.

And here we have some of the snacks. I had gone to Dick Blick art store in Evanston to look at the wet palletes they had. They are  far too big to use at my standard painting area. So instead I wandered over to the nearby Costs Plus World Market and picked up some snacks.

The wasabi soy almonds were tasty but the first bite always had a little more kick that I expected The sauce in the middle is a fresh habanero hot sauce. Very good on chips. The salsa is a hot chipotle that was more paste like than chunky, but I enjoyed it. Not shown are the chips and the chocolate covered espresso beans. The beans made it through the game, but the chips were gone in a matter of minutes.

We were short two players for the game. My dwarf was still badly wounded. Our Empire Bright Wizard, not badly wounded, but injured. Our elf bowman in great health. The benefit of being an archer when nothing actually gets up to you. Our 'hedge wizard', who in like twenty sessions we still haven't seen directly cast a spell, was in fairly good health.

We continued our exploration of the grounds with a few random encounters here and there and traps. One of the traps was exploding mushrooms. The insanity points were flowing fast and freely at the den of Nurgle. I got like five in one blast of mind warping insanity that caused me to forget everything. That was fun to play as I went about type listening to one player after another tell me what my character was like and being aghast at the whole thing.

"Dwarves send their people off to die when they make mistakes and yet are in decline? Dwarves don't sound too smart." The elf and his continued assurance that despite the fact that I wasn't as good as an elf, as a dwarf I was far superior to a human. The 'hedge wizard' assuring me that the bright wizard was nothing but a charlatan. It was great.

The final fight was VERY interesting for future games. The main thrust of the game has been the mutant child and his mutant ability to influence those around him. We were in this Nurgle manor in order to prevent the child from being bonded and controlled by a magic item.

Apparently the members in the party decided that the best way to do that was to kill the kid. Before anything else, before engaging the enemy in melee, just, you know, kill the kid. The elf missed with his bow shot, but the bright wizard completely toasted the kid.

The fight itself was brutal and I lost another piece of armor.

Before things could get too bad though, another group of enemies joined the fray, in this case, some vampires that we'd been working for and against in various parts of the campaign. They were less then pleased that we killed the boy, but in the ensuring chaos of the grand melee, we managed to escape. But the bright wizard took enough damage to burn a fate point. Two of the people who have the heal skill failed their roll and thought he was dead.

On the way out, we encountered the source of my trauma which cured me of the memory loss so I looked at the two, who have failed roll after roll in terms of making those heal checks and was like, "So... you two are telling me that the bright wizard is dead and you both looked him over?" Seeing their nods, I went back in and picked him up. Benefit of burning a fate point was that the bad guys tend to not molest you when your down.

So now the GM is reading around and ahead to see how he's going to make changes to the last portions of the book. Apparently the mutant kid is supposed to have survived the whole fight and come out with new insights.

Yeah, didn't happen.

But the weekend wasn't over!

On Saturday one of my friends wanted to head out to Games Plus in Mount Prospect. It's a fantastic store and carries a ton of miniatures, board games, card games, and other miniature related bits. As time goes on though, the physical ability of the store to carry more of the esoteric ranges of things diminishes which means I find myself going online more and more. For example, Andreas has a paint line that contains six paints of a particular color that you can use for highlighting and shading. Very handy. Another one is Scale 75. Another one is Mig or AMMO. This doesn't count the lines, like Foundry or Coat De Arms, that Games Plus has never carried.

Don't get me wrong, I know I don't 'need' any of those extra paints, but I like playing with them. For example, the store is now carrying some of the Plastic Soldier weathering sprays and primers. I've picked up the staining kit from Plastic Soldier but haven't found anything I want to use it on yet, so I held off on buying the weathering spray.

But I did pick up the Privateer Press wet palette. I've got friends who are like, "Make your own you lazy bastard or use the coupon for Michaels of Dick Blick and get a huge one for half the price!" and the 'real' one is way too big and well, I'm lazy.

I also picked up some matte black Army Painter primer. I know again people are like "Use auto primer" and a few have recommended Tamiya, but the Army Painter is usually good and isn't bad in price for the white or the black. I just finished off my Privateer Press Black Primer and I didn't like the design of the spray nozzle and it wasn't that good of a primer and it wasn't cheap so no more of that.

I also picked up some brass rod and some drill bits from Army Painter. There was a 'hobby' company bit there of drill bits, but they costs just as much as the Army Painter pack which came with the brass. An easy selection there.

After that it was off to paint for a little while. I'm showing one of the player's from the Friday game has to lay down some paint and it's more challenging that I thought it would be. Not sure if that's me being a terrible teacher or him being a horrible student. "You need to shake the paint before putting it in the pallette. You need to thin the paint. Only dip the tip of the brush in." Things that seem simple but... That's okay, learning comes from doing.

But the weekend didn't stop there. One of my friends, one who I don't see enough, was having a get together so I headed out there for some card games. We played a few hands of  Coup, a card game where the purpose is to reduce your enemies resources to zero. You only start with two and you don't get any more. There is a lot of bluffing and puzzling to do in it. It's a great and fast card game and we got several hands in. For a game I'd never played before, I'm seriously thinking of buying it because it's easy to pick up and I think can be played with gamers and nongamers with equal aplomb. Not to mention it's under $15 bones and already has some support games out for it.

We also played a game of Torches and Pitchforks. T&P is a game where you play a mob that hunts down monsters. It's a fun game but this hand was a little rough as we were all out of practice and we were very good at countering each other's ability to accumulate pint totals. I wish that Green Ronin would come out with a modern version of the game or a sequel or an add on. There's a lot of potential in it.

Outside of the gaming, it was good to have some intelligent conversation. At work it's either I'm quite because I'm in a cubicle or I'm catching up with my friends on various bits and pieces and 'real' conversation doesn't happen too often. It's one of those things where we see each other so much that b.s. is what we're best at. Seeing people you don't see that often gives you an opportunity to start spouting off and seeing where the pieces fall.

So the week started horrible and ended on a high note. Gaming for me, works best when you get to try out different games, hang out with people you haven't seen in a while, and share new food stuffs and stories among each other.

It may not be family but good gamers are as close as you're going to get and in some cases better.

The Thousand Thrones: A Sobering Game

I wasn't supposed to be at the game yesterday. It was the birthday of one of my former work amigos whose moved on to bigger and better things, and we and a few others were going to go to watch the Cubs. Heck, looks like they even won the game.

I did not go though. My gout was acting up. This means much medication for inflammation and pain and no drinking. No drinking = no Cubs. Sorry Cub fans but for me, baseball is about hanging with the amigos and making fun of the Cubs because they are such a wretched team. Well, no wretched but pitiful? When they haven't won the big game in 100+ years there is a problem.

So sober, I went to game. Bad news there is the alcohol was flowing freely as one of my amigos brought some Modelo. But alas, I resisted. I had brought spicy chips that were 'mild spicy' as well as some cheese dip and some snacks.

 Got to have something if it can't be the alcohol right?

The game resulted in more investigations with our discovering the identity of 'The Vengeance of Sigmar'. The problem with this whole set up though? We spent much of last week learning what a fierce and dangerous man this was, and we find him as a pitiful mutant in his own apartment on the verge of death.

How could that have been different? How could we have found him? Well, he could still be on the verge of death for example, but if you wanted to follow up on how awesome he was, have a few other corpses be there with him. Give the players more reinforcement in terms of who their actual enemies are by the corpses left behind. Or even drag marks in blood showing that the guy didn't go down like a punk after being described as the Punisher/Batman of the Warhammer world.

After some more exploration of the city, we found what we assumed were the last clues and were on the way out of the city when we were attacked by thieves. We managed to quickly incapacitate the 'human agents' when the vampires came out. We learned that a magical bird who'd been spying on us that we killed with a great shot by the wood elf archer, was actually a comrade of ours. It was very "didn't see that coming".

I suppose we could have fought and probably got our asses handed to us as these vampires were soaking up some good damage relatively quickly and had high stats all around, but we'd already learned what we needed to and let the vampires have a tome that provided more information about some magical items that the cultists of Papa Nurgle were trying to use to control the mutant child with his powers.

All in all a satisfying game with a good mix of exploration and fighting and a reminder that there are many factions in the Warhammer setting and not all of them that are you enemies are each other's friends.

Hope everyone else had a good weekend of gaming!

The Thousand Thrones: Tequila and Trollslayers

Yesterday it was time for another game of Warhammer FRPG. I think this is like session ten or something of that nature? Has the GM got his money's worth out of the Thousand Thrones campaign yet? Hard to say but my physical book of the Warhammer FRPG 2nd edition hasn't seen this much use in years. Despite the portability and ease of use of PDFs, people like flipping through books and I'm on that list too.

Anyway, that Hornitos Black Label next to the book? A very interesting tequila. As Arnold would say while playing Conan, "I have no words" or something to that effect of providing a 'technical' description of drinking it, but for tequila brewed in whiskey barrels? Very nice. I would buy again. Mind you, I'm not putting it ahead of say, my 'standards' or 'go to' tequilas which include: Patron, Don Julio, Avion, Three Generations, or Corzo, but it has a very rich blend of flavors to it.

For an actual technical review? Go here.

Even better though, one of my friends brought some Nego Medlo and another some hard apple cider and some of those crazy margarita beers. Much drinking to be had.

Anyway, back to Warhammer FRPG.

We had a nice battle at the end of last session and we started this one off in various states of being wounded. Fortunately none of us were badly injured so restoration was pretty quick. Three of us are playing non-humans. I'm a dwarf, another is a wood elf, and a third a halfling. The human 'adventurer', a hedge wizard whose never cast magic around us, has the healing skill and made it only on the other human in the party so we ribbed her about being a species racist.

After that, it was time for more investigation. Part of that was a book dealer who had possession of questionable content. As we went to visit him, the place was burning down. The dealer was taken to the church of the healing goddess while I stuck around and tried to stop the fire from spreading.

Up show the witch hunters and demand we let that building burn but allow us to prevent the fire from spreading.

Meanwhile in the church, two of the four who went are able to get in with some quick thinking with my other friends are just spouting the stupid. I'm sitting there thinking, "Man, the GM is being awful kind to you guys to start with." Ah, the perils of alcohol at the game.

Nonetheless, they find out that under the book shop is an entrance to a secured location with various books and a list of buyers and other goods. As they come out and meet up with me though, the witch hunters are all like, "You must come with us!"

One of the players is an actual empire wizard and doesn't want any trouble so we decide, yeah, okay, we'll go with you.

Then the witch hunters are attacked by an angry mob. The cries of the mob indicate that they are people who lost their homes due to the witch hunters interference, but since I stayed behind, the GM tells me I don't recognize any of them and that they seem to be of a different type of rabble altogether. The halfling gets ready to take off, but as I'm a troll slayer, I'm all up and about the "death!" parts as we didn't attack the witch hunters.

Many of the crowd start taking off when the elf and halfling begin raining death on them and the troll slayer stalks their midsts like a wolf among lambs. The wizard tries to draw official city attention to us with some noise and the 'adventurer' aka hedge wizard flays about with a long sword and takes a few hits in return.

After the battle, the seven witch hunters are reduced to four. I ask the GM what type of equipment they have. Most of the other party members have this image of them being heavily armed and armored and the GM's like "blah blah blah" which meant leather armor and crossbows instead of say, plate armor and guns.

I turn my back on them and they're like, "Nope, you ain't going anywhere." Seeing as how most of the party is for once not injured, we turn on the witch hunters and make quick work of them. The GM laughs about it because he said the book assumed we would flee the scene when the witch hunters came under attack in the first place but he quickly picked up the pace and in the ensuing melee, we are victorious again!

After that, some more exploration. A few of the characters fall through the weakened floor into the basement and it is there that we find the hidden door, buried under a ton of hot rubble and take a few wounds from heat related damage but eventually get it open.  Some more exploration of the sewers and some good subtle smacks from the GM lead us to the books which have already been ransacked.

We find out that several of the people on the list have been killed by Zorro, I mean, the Vengeance of Sigmar. This is a black masked, black garbed vigilante that goes about killing high and low born who deal with chaos including a wizard who we jab our own Bright Wizard college student about. We do some more training and hunting down for clues and information before the GM calls it a night.

It's been nice hitting up the old Warhammer FRPG. Player deaths have been fairly minimal, but I suspect that has more to do with the lack of combat and the great opportunities for investigation as opposed to how powerful we are as characters. Fate points have been spent mind you, but I think it's the Fortune points that are keeping us alive.

Most of the players are hitting up their second careers. This has lead to the whole, "No, those advancements are not cumulative. If it's +10% in one career and +10% in another, you can't buy it up to +20%." leading to protests of outrage.

Kind of annoying to me really. I mean, like I said, it's week ten and people are still looking at like the basics of advancing a character? Sheesh people. Some of them were thinking of changing what they were looking at in terms of advancing their careers. Me? Because the Troll Slayer basic career has so many advancements, and for whatever reason, I'm the type who buys out all my advancements, I still need a few more hundred xp to make it to Giant Slayer.

The GM has also told me that I don't have to kill a giant per say, just something powerful enough to represent a equal threat so that I'd then become whatever that 'slayer' type is. Which is cool and I can see why he'd do it that way. Minimizes the fuss he has to make in order to allow advancement of the character while still providing the 'flavor' and purpose of the whole thing.

I think the GM said we're on something like chapter four now and a few more to go. Probably take us to August.

Anyone else picking up old games and 'classic' adventurers to catch up on things once missed? I'm reading through the Wizards of the Coast Red Wizards PDF only adventure about the Red Wizards. Some nice descriptions on some of the Forgotten Realms locals and a very 'playbox' feel to it. I might run that, but heck, Dungeons and Dragons 5th edition proper may be out by the time we finish this so it's hard to say what's next.

Well, thanks for reading and good gaming everyone!

The Thousand Thrones: Once More Unto The Breach!

Last Friday, I managed to get in on another game of the 2nd edition of the Warhammer Fantasy Role Playing Game aka Warhammer FRPG. The Thousand Thrones is a massive book that details out rise of Karl, 'Sigmar Reborn' in the Empire and the various events that happen around the lad as well as the general terribleness of the Warhammer world.

In this setting, I'm playing a Troll Slayer.

I finally came into some coin in the campaign. I don't want to say it was overdue because I understand that the Warhammer FRPG isn't like Dungeons and Dragons 3rd or 4th edition where X amount of coin and equipment is assumed to be in the player's possession on a level by level basis.  I'll say though, that it was good to have some coin.

Now with the Troll Slayer, the only thing I need, in terms of 'gear' for my advanced career, Giant Slayer, is my great axe. Well, that's not quite true. I also need to kill a giant. The GM has assured me that when the time comes that won't be a problem even though there are no giants within the campaign itself.

This week's session found the group continuing our quest to discover the traitors and assassins within Karl's massive procession. There are those seeking to kill and or capture the boy. This means killing a whole bunch of people around the lad.

This time it would seem that we were against cultists of Papa Nurgle, the ruinous power of plague and disease. Someone trying to poison the soup!

Again, the efforts to find information and discover what is going on, are far more at the front of the game then they are in the big D&D. The game doesn't rely solely on combat or treasure as a method of advancement so those things aren't the focus on most games I've been in.

Mind you, I'm a Troll Slayer and well, I play the character as one whose easily bored with the various gatherings of information, often testing the sharpness of my blade against my thumb. My fellow players have joked that I've done it so many times that my whole thumb is a giant scar at this point.

But in the two combats we had this sessions, they were glad to have the giant orange mohawk there.

Our first encounter was one we essentially knew was going to end in violence as we sought out 'the Butcherer'. This individual was working with others in the camp to poison people with a magical stew of Papa's. We quickly disposed of him and brought our efforts to Karl and tried to beat some information out of the 'rat' in the nest but Karl was distraught with our methodologies and banished us!

The Game Master did note though, that despite our banishment, we were still devoted to the Karl. For those who've never played, that's because Karl is a mutant whose power is inspiring devotion to him. I made my initial Will Power roll to avoid falling under the trap initially a few sessions ago but missed it this time so I too was now planning how best to serve.

Mind you that's what I'd been doing before because the boy hired us to watch out for him and our original mission involved that anyway.

I asked the GM is we would have to sneak back into the giant encampment and work our way from there or if there were things that could happen outside that, as we were in the city of Aldorf. I can't remember if that's our final destination or not but I do know that it's a huge city and we were able to explore a bit including some shopping.

The GM even broke out the Old World Armoury because our newfound apprentice mage in the party kept looking for darts. Not in the core book and not in the Armoury. GM said, "Don't worry about it. It's a non-expensed resource, you just have to make sure you renew your supply every so often." Seemed a good solution to me.

Now again, I have all the 'trappings' I need for my next career. I did struggle with how much armor to buy. A troll slayer starts with a leather shirt, 1 armor point, and mine was destroyed by a critical hit earlier in the campaign. I'd been going shirtless since then. I weighed the whole suicidal urges of the Troll Slayer against the practicality of playing the character. In art, I'd seen Troll Slayers garbed in chain armor before and there isn't really any restriction to it.

But I stuck with leather and gave a lot of my gold to another player who fully armored himself up with it. The other players sought out leads and information unto becoming their next advanced careers and went about buying the trappings to help make that happen.

When you have a character concept, how far will you go against the grain of that concept to insure some level of survivability? Would anyone have bought the chain shirt and said screw the leather? Should I have just went without any armor?

The good news, is that the leather soon proved it's use as agents of caravan from various factions where in the city and a fight broke out between some of them. We assisted those we thought were the 'good' guys based on our previous research, although this being Warhammer, it's possible all of them were chaos cultists.

After that fight we gathered a bit more information and the GM called a halt to the session. We still haven't finished the chapter though, so no XP! Argh! That's okay, one of the 'swing' parts of Warhammer and it's random character creation, is as a Troll Slayer, I have a LOT of advances to take. Most of the other players? Not so much.

Looking forward to the next session.

The Thousand Thrones: Children Say the Damndest Things

Yesterday I managed to get in another game of Warhammer FRPG second edition in the Thousand Thrones campaign. It started off with potential, as at long last, thanks to the Liquor Bar in Niles, I was finally able to find my Ty Ku coconut flavor in the full sized bottle. Lots of places have it in the small bottles but they want like $10 a bottle and here I was able to get the full sized one for under $20.

The bad news? I forgot it at home! Noooo!

The good news? Another one of my amigos brought Pacifico and between three of us, we managed to quickly down his twelve pack. As awesome as it would have been had there been more than a twelve pack, I hesitate to think of the effects of such a consumption of a large amount of alochol of my poor liver.

Good news is now I can save the Ty Ku for next week!

But in role playing...

Everyone managed to make it this week. We've recently been cursed with car problems. One of my friends suffered them last game and I have also suffered them to the tune of having to break down after twelve years and destroy any free funds I may have had for oh, the next six years by buying a new car. Ugh. It's a Kia Soul 2014 in the standard silver. It's so damn new it doesn't have a CD player. Somehow they decided that was an optional thing.

But anyway...

One of the things I've enjoyed about the Thousand Thrones, or well, Warhammer FRPG, is that there is a LOT more investigation going on. There is a often in the prewritten adventurers, a huge chunk of characters, scenarios, and well, an openness that allows the players to interact with the world far more than most standard Dungeons and Dragons adventures that rely on the funnel of a Dungeon to get everyone the XP and magic items that are required to advance.

I mention magic items, because while we've going on game five or six or something now, we've got exactly zero items. Which isn't bad in terms of power raise or anything, but I'm just pointing out that despite the swing of combat and how dangerous it can be, we're still managing to destroy enemies even when burning up fate points thanks to things like Ulric's furty. In D&D it'd be assumed, by the book of course, not individual campaigns, that by level X, you HAVE to have A, B, and C or the module and other prewritten adventure assumptions are just completely off the rail.

We did a lot of investigation that was a little hampered by our skill set. The player who is our 'faceman' if you will, is a little new, wild and reckless who tends to speak a bit before he realizes that he's wandered wall and off the beaten path, whereas I like to think I'm good at these sort of things, my character, a troll slayer, has a completely different path for gathering information.

So I went about it like I figured a dwarf would. Looking at the armaments of the camp without asking too many questions. Started to count the different uniforms, weapons, and armor and see where they broke up into different groups. Started to listen to the various back and forth between those who were merely camp followers there to make a living, those who were true believers, and those who weren't necessarily believers that the child was Sigmar reborn, but was something special and they wanted to be there to be a part of it.

After a few hours of hunting down information and writing down a ton of names and numbers, the opportunity for action is thrust upon us. Because of the open nature of the game, there may be moments of paralysis while the players seek information and debate on what happens next. In such cases, it's good to have an outside even happen that can provide some opportunity for the players to immediately interact with the setting.

In this case it was a zombie invasion with ghoul lieutenants and a vampire leader who sought to capture the child. We started off fighting the ghouls and zombies and moved onto the big guy.

Being a troll slayer, I figure, well, might as well fight the ghouls. They are the greater threat and therefore, the greater opportunity for death!

Remember how I said that combat is swingy? Well, not only did I never get hit and suffered no damage in the two fights that occurred that night, I only hit like three times out of like twelve attacks, and at some instances, my chance to hit was as high as 70% thanks to outnumbering the enemy. I was whiffing swing after swing and the three times I did hit, one of them  was for terrible damage. There was no Ulric's fury that night I tell you.

The bad news? Well, we've known for a while now that the "kid" we're following, his 'Crusade' if you will, is one that is influenced by his chaotic ability to manipulate those closest to him into loving him. This isn't a total domination effect because those effected still do what they want to, save that if the child asks them to do something, they have to, unless it's something completely out of character. Turns out that one of the group, during the vampie fight, decided to move closer to the child and BAM! Under the spell thanks to a failed will power roll.

And then when the rest of us decided, "Yeah, we're heading back to the encampament" we were ambushed by his zealots and brought into his presence. The halfling and I made our will power rolls but everyone else is pretty much at the call of the Child now. It'll be interesting to see what happens next game.

Personally I was tempted to try to plant my great axe into the kid's skull but with three members of the party under the kid's control, and let's be honest, my character wouldn't know if it was everyone or not, I decided to play it cool. It wasn't like we were being asked to actually DO anything yet. My character was figuring that being killed by his own comrades would not be a glorious death!

Next week I'll be curious to see where we head out to. We'll be on chapter four of I think... nine chapters +Tom Wright mentioned?

Anyway, it was a good game. For those who aren't necessarily playing Dungeons and Dragons but other games that might require a little more player interaction, do you find that there is ever a time when the group comes to a stop because they're not sure what the next move is?

For those playing in fantasy campaigns that aren't necessarily high magic, or common magic, like D&D, do you find that you miss magic items and the easy gathering of wealth? I know my character in the Warhammer setting is still scrounging some coin together to try and replaced the lost leather vest (destroyed by a critical) but I'm okay without having it, as after all, that will assist me in a glorious death!

Warhammer FRPG: Thousand Thrones Slog Continues!

Everything started off in a mix of suck and pleasant. On my way to +Tom Wright house, everyone decided, "Hey, even though this street is closed off, let's ALL take this side street. We're super smart that way!" So there was traffic off his street for four blocks. I parked about two blocks away because that traffic just wasn't going anywhere.

On the other hand, I did stop at Sarpino's and pick up a meatball calzone. While I'm not a huge fan of their pizza, their calzone's are pretty good for fast food.

Even better, one of my other amigos had brought over Justice League War. That carton movie appears to be based off the new origin of the Justice League in the new "52" version of DC. M'eh. There is some good dialog and banter back and forth between the characters. The use of Shazam as opposed to Aquamen was interesting but strange in that you now have Superman and Shazam on the same team.

The movie itself though?  It boils down to one long fight screen between the Justice League and Darkseid. I've seen worse but it just didn't do anything for me. If I want a real long fight scene I'll go turn on Dragonball Z and watch the Cell saga or something.

But the amigo who brought over the movie also brought over Dos Equis and although it was only a twelve pack, it made everything much more... interesting!

So we started off recovering from our fight with the nine vampires. A fight that the GM assured us we couldn't win. So we decide to head back after the 'Child', some weird mutant with the ability to influence those around him and the strength of the influence increases with the time spent with the child.

We wander through a forest, following the trail. Lots of refuse and corpses left in the wake of the wagons of the child's entourage.  As night starts to fall, we come across a way inn. For those who don't know, in the Warhammer setting, way inns are stations where travelers and rest and relax in dangerous places in relative safety.

Turns out the crusade has apparently already been here as its abandoned. We search around for a while looking for some provisions or other treasures that might have been left when a wagon with a priest and his various guards and attendants come up. We and they decide on a mutual "ignore each other" bit and set up shifts to patrol the walls.

The elf and I take one of the later patrols since we both have night vision. Hey, look at that, some critters on the inside of the fort tring to open the gate. They blather about wanting only food and shelter but their on our side of the gate trying to open it to the OUTSIDE where other creatures are already gathered.

Remember when I said that combat in Warhammer can be swingy? One of them hits me with a sling bullet for 18 wounds right off the bat. Unless you're traveling with the right party, especially with the random rolling of starting character careers, getting heavily wounded sucks. Anyway, my dwarf has 14 wounds and a 4 toughness so I'm up but seriously hurt. A few rounds of combat allows us to finish off those on the inside.

Turns out the ones on the outside are also mutants but see, their being chased by Beastmen. So the guards who were firing on the mutants while we fought the ones inside, them help the mutants into the fort.

What follows is almost a narrative combat in which mutant, beastman, and guardsmen suffer horrific damage. I burn through a fate point, one of my other buddies burns through a fate point, the GM is kind and allows another player whose already burned through all his fate points to 'only' be knocked to zero wounds.

At that point the wood elves show up and massacre the Beastmen.

Yeah, I felt that anything we did at that point was pretty much a m'eh opportunity.

And that's the second time that's happened in two sessions.

If the next session involves another ass-whipping with no possibility of victory, can't say I'll be continuing this campaign.

I enjoy a challenge. I enjoy having the potential for death. You get fate points and fortune points so there isn't a real threat from something stupid happening once or twice.

I hate narrative rail roading. Or at least when used too much. I've had my share of players that are like wild chickens and need some structure to get them going onto the adventure proper. But beating the players down in encounters time and time again isn't quite the same thing.

For those who've run through the Thousand Thrones, I've seen some positive and negative comments about it. I'll be curious to see where the next session takes us but may have to bring a 24 pack next time to wade through it.

Warhammer FRPG: Fight or Flight?

+Tom Wright ran his Thousand Thrones last Friday and the car worked and I was able to get to the game. Hell, I even brought 312 in a twelve pack and an old friend who I've been gaming with since high school was there. It was great.

The Warhammer game does have some swing to it. The 'Ulric's Fury' means you can inflict some tremendous damage with a lucky roll, especially if you're using a weapon that lets you roll two dice and keep the better of the two.

Our adventure this week was a little rail road as we approached a town and were captured by the local militia who insisted we were outlaws but would verify our story as long as we did them a favor. Not the worst thing to happen as it wasn't like they took our money or branded us and it could have been handled much worse.

But back to how Warhammer can be a little swingy in combat.

I mention this, because unlike say a standard level based game, such as Dungeons and Dragons, you may know necessarily know when you're outclassed.

Can you see where this is going?

During our investigations, we came across a vampire. It's been a long time for me, so I wasn't sure what the power level of the vampires were, but one of my friends was like, "Yeah, we need to go."

But the rest of us were like, "How tough could it be?"

We soon found out and managed to retreat without too many of us spending fate points to make that escape!

When you're running a game, do you provide any cues for players to let them know that, "Yeah, maybe you don't want to fight this." In some games, you can get the baseline depending on how well you know the game. Dungeons and Dragons is a good example here because if you're first level and start running into hill giants and ancient dragons, yeah, might be time to hall off.

If you're playing a game you've never played before? Or one that doesn't use levels at all but something like Call of Cthulhu where it's all % based and advancement isn't necessarily do anything for durability?

For players, do you have any 'warning' signs you've learned to pick up from the other players or the game master? Do you wait until you're at some point in your abilities or health where you decide, "Yeah, might to be time to head out."