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: Against the Plague Cult!

Due to an ongoing gout flare up, I missed last week. At this point, I haven't had any alcohol for a month straight. God, how do people live like this on a regular basis? Ugh.

So this week, I find out one of my role playing friends, Mark Topic, native of the South Side of Chicago, passed on Sunday and services will be held on Wednesday. Mark was a min-maxer to the extreme and I was looking forward to seeing what he was going to do with 5th edition. Alas it was not meant to be. I and several of my friends will be there to pay our respects to the family.

A few of our other players knew Mark better and thought that the services were yesterday so were even later and were not pleased to have been so misinformed. They also missed last week, although their absence wasn't illness related.

Due to three of us missing, there was a ton of idle chatter and it took a while to get into the game. One of the amigos tried to steer us into the gaming because he's a sleep deprived bastich and worries that if the game isn't moving forward he's going to pass out.

It didn't help that I brought some chicharones, huge slabs of them freshly made in our local Mexican grocery store, as well as some of the dreaded Nutty Buddies, some real habanero hot sauce, and a host of other junk food. Normally I skip on the junk food and bring booze but gout.

Warhammer continues to be an interesting game. With the new edition of Dungeons and Dragons out, one of the things I hate about it, is random rolling for stats and hit points. The standard array and point buy systems don't seem up to the potential of a point buy and don't have any variety in them, it's one flat level.

I mention this because in Warhammer, I don't mind the random rolling for stats. Mind you though, you also randomly roll what you career WAS when you start playing. This can force you into more situations than just randomly rolling stats and hit points. For me, the difference is that if you want to play a fighter in Dungeons and Dragons and your stats are crap and you roll poorly on your hit points, it's not fun. If you want to play a fighter in Warhammer, even if you don't start as one, you'll get there and the stats are much lower to begin with so it's not as great a difference.

Mind you I haven't played yet, and I've seen people argue that due to the Dungeons and Dragons hard limit of 20 on stats that high stats aren't as important but at the same time, there's going to be a sweet spot in the game, and if one guy starts with a 20 in his prime stat and you start with a 14...

I have the starter set and well, looks like the guys I game with want me to give running Champions aka Hero 6th edition a shot. And of course Hero itself is out of print but the Champions book isn't outrageous. I think everyone's going PDF on this one though so we'll see how it goes.

Anyway, another thing that's funny in Warhammer is how the scenarios can sometimes be written. For example, in the basement of an abandonded building, we saw a seen of such bloodshed, that we had to make a save versus fear. I failed and due to seeing a bloody mess, fled the scene into an ambush. A giant slayer flees from blood? But it's one of the reasons you have rules for those things right?

In disgust, my character cut his orange mohawk off until he's shown that he's recovered his courage!

Another problem is that the ambush? Mutants who infected me with some weird disease so my stats keep dropping by 5% when I miss my Toughness roll. Down to -10% so far!

Also suffering a few more Insanity Points due to wounds and some horrific scenes that we've witnessed. As I think I'm now past six IP, I have to make a roll on the crazy table!

I'm also finding myself interested in how much information the group doesn't find. One of the things we found was a human with some weird plague beetle attached to his back. We killed him in like one round and the GM was showing us walls of text that could have been revealed to us. Mind you, during our exploration of a manor, we managed to find numerous books, journals, and other player hand out bits that revealed a lot of information, but it makes me wonder what ELSE we could learn by being more careful. Good thing my character is a 'humble' Giant Slayer though so I don't worry about those things.

Hopefully next week goes better in both real world and game time usage.

For those who don't game as often as they like, do you have any particular methods of madness to keep your fellow players focused on the game? I find that I'm pretty bad, as a player, at keeping things focused and on track. When I'm a GM though... man, the ruler comes down! I'm too busy playing catch up on everything and keep trying to focus on the game and what's been happening with people I only see at the game.

I suppose the solution is to hang out with the amigos more or get to the game before the game starts but that can be difficult too. Curse you real world!

Ah well...

The Thousand Thrones: And a Giant Shall Appear

Another week of sobriety. My hats off to those who do it on a regular basis. If the goat wasn't slowly devouring my ankle bones I assure you, the role playing of my dwarf troll slayer would've been more in tune with the dwarves actual actions. Alas, I have to remain sober and hope that by next week for an after work gathering I'm invited to, turns out more alcohol fueled. The two bottles of tequila and one bottle of sake aren't going to drink themselves.

Anyway, I've been bringing over chips and dip to insure that I'm still bringing goods over. When you play at someone else's house, do you wind up bringing food for the group, or is it more of an every man for himself thing? The only thing I tend to hate is that sometimes, not with the group I'm with now mind you, is that you become known as "that guy" whose always bringing stuff and when you don't, it's expected that you should have. Screw that noise.

This week brought us back into the forest where we'd already encountered some beastmen and mutants in the past as a way inn. We were seeking out the birthplace for a specific individual and it was like a month away on foot.

In Dungeons and Dragons, I can't imagine something that that being put into an adventure. "The players will take a month of overland travel and have the following list of random encounters and set encounters." Perhaps there are instances of that long distance travel? I know that boats and back in the day, Spelljammers tended to take up the massive amounts of time but travel time was usually a day or a week or so tops.

During our trip we had a few encounters that made this one of the heaviest battle thick Warhammer FRPG's that I've been in for my buddy +Tom Wright game. We encountered a massive spider, very Lord of the Rings like, a group of 10 wolf riding goblins, many corpses strung up along the way in coves, and a few hunters from a nearby town.

Seems that they had some information so we agreed to check out their problems as apparently their village was suffering some malady and many of the descriptions sounded familiar to those of us who'd fought some Nurgle cultists prior to this.

Some investigation wound up with a few great role playing moments that I enjoyed. For example, there was a smithy who was just crushed with despair and I did some repair work on the armor and cast a quick dagger for the mage to use as a spell component. For me, that was solid because my dwarf's background, which only exists in my head mind you, is that he was a dwarf who got a little too greedy, sold some bad weapons to men of the Empire who turned around and sold them to dwarves who were able to track the work back to him, leading to his exile to protect the status of his wife and other family members from the shame, not of necessarily trying to make a buck, but of getting caught and costing dwarves their lives with those shoddy weapons, which were never meant for dwarven hands and bought second hand, to save money.

Another great role playing moment,  took place with our halfling of doom. He's a dangerous slinger and is able to inflict horrific damage and is one of the most dangerous in the group and perhaps deals the most damage consistently. He's also from a hovel, literally, and is finance driven. To get him into the well for investigation purposes in the town, we assured him that there was probably gold and other treasures down there. He found the cause of plague but no money, so our local wizard threw a coin into the well for him to recover and that made him happy.

Further investigation revealed that there was a possible suspect and we picked up his cold trail through more luck than skill. It lead us into a corrupted part of the forest that lead into an underground cave where a giant was being transformed. Tom managed to pull together several previous threads in this fight as a Nurgle cultists was using a giant to pull forth disease and vileness.

In the fight I took wounds enough to bring me to -2, so hey, another insanity point there, but we did manage to win through. With the xp from this one, I had enough xp to move into giant slayer as a career.

The interesting thing, is I don't feel underpowered in terms of me being one of the last to get a second career. Due to the vulgarity of the initial random role, some starting careers are quick to drop and move into a new career. Others have a lot more potential options in terms of stat advancements and I can't speak for you, but in most cases, when I'm player Warhammer FRPG 1st or 2nd edition, I almost always buy out all my advances.

Because I started off as a troll slayer, that gave me a LOT of advances I could take, well over 1,000 xp worth. In the odd twelve weeks we've been playing, while I have been useful in combat, I've never been 'the guy', which would probably go to the halfling.  But that's okay. I'm able to soak a lot of damage and with my great weapon and it's impact ability, allowing me to roll 2 dice for damage, I'm usually able to get an Ulric's Fury, allowing more dice to be rolled, pretty often. It's good stuff.

In terms of game play, man, we lack focus. We must've wasted an hour or so on small talk of various nature. My friends here were apparently unaware that the new edition of Dungeons and Dragons had a PDF of some rules out for free and no one went to Games Plus, the mainstream FLSG that we usually go to, in order to buy the basic set. So most of the conversations were just about BS.

In some ways, I love it. It's a big part of why I play. I work a little under 50 hours on a regular week due to being salary so I don't do a lot during the week. It's not necessarily that the number of hours is so vast, it's just that the 5:30 AM start time insure that if I want to maintain sanity, I go to bed fairly early so not a lot of outgoing parting and socializing going on in my life during the week.

On the other hand though, man, we are like cats or squirrels or some other short attentioned spanned animal and we apparently almost all love to talk. It's great in terms of having friends you can spew your nonsense out and have each feed off the other, but in terms of keeping the adventure moving forward? No, not too easy.

Anyone run into that in their own games? Strangely enough when I've played with strangers at Gen Con or various Chicago Game Days, the group understands that they have X amount of time and often are off at a bullet run to insure that they get the main parts of the rules down and what's the initial start point and BAM! They go.

Another... well, I don't want to say 'problem', but think I noticed, is that several of us have fairly good knowledge of the Warhammer FRPG either from reading the novels, painting the miniatures, or playing the game for decades. This tends to spill over into the characters a lot and I'm just as guilty of it as anyone else. On the other hand, dwarves are fairly long lived in Warhammer and my dwarf is actually older than the wood elf in the party. Anyone strickly enforce that "your character wouldn't know that"? If it's top secret knowledge, yeah, I can see it, but for a lot of the things we pinged on, it was like 'Herd Stones' I think they're called, where the beastmen gather and burn their offerings, the whole 'Ruinous Powers' thing where we pretty much know each of their names and who their servants are, etc... No "Oh, the hidden gods of law? Yeah, know all about them."

A solid game and next week will have me starting out as my new career with a few raises thanks to the XP given at the end of the session. Bad thing? While this week we missed one player due to the holiday, next week it'll be a minimum of two. Hope that GM is ready to go easy on us!

Hope everyone had a happy fourth and stayed safe!

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: 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 Weekly Notes 3!

Ah Ty-Ku. My favorite drink they make, is the coconut sake. Unfortunately, my local Jewel grocery store only carries the small bottle and it's just under $10 a bottle and well, I'd need two of them at least to start a buzz.

So I went over to the local Binny's and they had only two of the varieties, the 'silver' and 'black' bottles.  Picked up the silver bottle there. While driving back, ran into a local liquor store. They had all of the Ty Ku drinks and all of them BUT the coconut in the large bottles! Shakes fist angrily at the air. They were also undercutting Binny's price by a few bones so I picked up the black bottle with the gift wrapping that came with a few glasses and some chopsticks and instructions on how to drink the sake via Kampi!

So next week back to the black Ty-Ku! If it makes in in the fridge for a week...

Got there a little early so busted out the Cthulhu Flux. It was a surprisingly long game. I can tell the guys I played with, including myself, are WAY out of practice forgetting to read the abilities of Creepers and Keepers as well as screwing up a few of the rules here and there. There are some fun cards here. For example, there's one where you speak one of your personal fears and get an extra card and the ability to play it.

I thought I had a lock in on the win for sure because I had like ten keepers but nope, one of the guys managed to get a play of cards in the right order and snatched victory from me.

After that we were still waiting for an amigo show up so we played a hand of Monty Python Flux. This one is pretty classic. We even pulled the sing a Monty Python song and get another draw. We were left staggering after about three songs though because we're all getting to be old and know only some of the bits these days as opposed to actual songs but yes, Sir Brave Robin was sung out as well as Every Sperm Is Sacred. Thankfully the game ended before our sanity was destroyed by our poor singing. This one was a draw as our amigo managed to make it to the game.

Our game continued where we left off in the swamp. In a short period of time, we got to find some strange swamp worms, an immobile tree that still managed to incapacitate one of us through surprise, a few chaos mutants, a few more mutants, and then terrorized some thugs and low lives.

One thing I didn't miss about Warhammer 2nd edition combat? How swingy it is. Ulric's Fury can be quite nasty, but even without it, if you're facing something that has a 3 strength and rolls a 9, that's still 12 damage. Now for more experienced adventurers who might have some armor, say, 2 armor points and a toughness of 5, that's still going to be 7 wounds, which can be quite a few. Mind you this swing works both ways though and well, the players have Fate Points and we even remembered to use our Fortune points this time around which was good!

One thing I like? Even with the number of combats we were involved in, these combats go quickly. While I'm one of the few people I know who actually enjoyed 4th edition Dungeons and Dragons, I know the combat in that edition is fairly long. All the options and interactions and non-standard moves. Warhammer? I don't know if it's we're not using maneuvers or that we've only got so many actions to select from in the first place or what, but those combats fly quickly.

We haven't started using miniatures or anything yet and we've been ribbing the GM about it. It's okay because we're not really a huge missile using group and haven't been in any situation where cover might be an issue and haven't fought any weird creatures that were hiding from us so it's worked out in that aspect.

The amount of investigation we've been doing so far has been impressive. My character though isn't necessarily too worried about it as I think our group is sooner or later going to decide to quit looking for information on this 'heir of Sigmar' and just take care of business. We've heard from several people already about various unpleasantries involved with the 'golden child' so I imagine we're heading in that direction already. Only thing is some of the other players are worried we're going to miss some weird clue like a secret weakness so the investigation will continue!

For those playing Warhammer FRPG now, any particular favorite bits? Anything you'd warn other people of? When you play, do you use miniatures or skip those?

Warhammer FRPG: Thousand Thrones

Yesterday I managed to get in another game of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 2nd edition. I even remember to bring my own dice this time. Since I didn't go out with my work amigos yesterday, I brought some sake, Ty-Ku, with me. I like Ty-Ku because it's one of the few sake I've had that can be drunk cold. For whatever reason, I like my sake cold and a lot of them cannot be drunk in that fashion.

Anyone have a favorite when gaming in terms of the old alcohol? I'm fond of beer and stuff like Ty-Ku in part because it's not a high alcohol content. When the hard liquor comes out I'm afraid it's time for someone else to drive so I can truly enjoy it.

While playing WFRPG, I was struck by how different it is than the standard Dungeons and Dragons game. For instance, no dice were rolled in combat. Sure, there were a few opportunities for combat which my character, a troll slayers, sought to instigate, but cooler heads prevailed.

While I've heard some criticisms on Thousand Thrones, and I've never read it myself, the GM +Tom Wright did a nice job of letting us wander around and pick up various bits of information after giving us a 'patron' that provided us a quick reason to do so.

My character, Orzad Gottri, doesn't have a lot of non-combat skills. His main contribution to the group that night was being very mean looking. I came up with two habits for my character. One, running his thumb along a very sharp two handed axe when asking questions. The second, running his hand along his bright orange mohawk. Similar habits that reinforce one another. Makes it easier to get into character and have a 'catch' so to speak.

It also helps that the TV show Viking's has been on. While dwarves aren't necessarily Norsemen in and of themselves, there are a lot of nods in that direction so it gets my mind into the proper state for it.

The one skill I do have that is useful in gathering information? Intimidate. Well, that and Consume Alcohol although the GM didn't call for any tests on that one.

For once, I also got to use Street Fighter. It's a skill that provides a bonus on your Weapon Skill when fighting unarmed as well as a bonus to damage. My elf comrade decided to move a body atop a hallucination inducing mushroom that exploded in his face and he then decided to attack us and almost cut the arm off the new play before we subdued him. And he failed some test and got another insanity point. So far that's two for him.

During the investigations, we got to meet and interact with a lot of NPC's. One part involved finding out some information on an orphanage. Ironically enough our 'adventurer', a hedge wizard we don't know is a hedge wizard, was going to try and pass off the halfling as a child in order to get into the orphanage when her plan to hire some local children to go in failed to pan out.

One of the things that I found funny, is that I haven't played 2nd edition in a long time. So long in fact, that I forgot about Fortune Points. See, in 1st edition, you didn't have any of those. On the other hand, I believe you also bought up your advancements at 10% increments, not 5% so there are some trade offs. One of the players was a little upset at the GM for not telling him about these things.

I'm of mixed feelings on it. On one hand, is it the GM's job to provide all the rules and nooks and crannies to the players or are the players responsible for at least reading the core rule book and having a good understanding of the game?

I think some games have gotten to the point of player-GM information separation so much that the GM is expected to handle X, Y, and Z, and the players A, B, and C as opposed to having the players and GM's working off of the same set of rules. Some could argue that even 1st edition was like that, but most of the stuff in the Dungeon Master's Guide wasn't player oriented, as opposed to stuff that could happen around, to, or around the players.

For games you haven't played in a while or you're new to, what do you do? Do you go back and fully read the rule book? Do you rely on the GM to point out things you should know?

Return to Warhammer Fantasy RPG 2nd Edition

I don't play every game out there. Some like the World of Darkness, I'm just not into. I get their popularity, but all spectrums of the hobby don't engage me. Not a big fan of the whole 'monstrous genre modern times' thing to be honest. Strangely enough 'horror' on the other hand I can dig quite a bit and enjoy a lot of Brian Lumley's stuff or at least did when I originally read it. The whole WoD thing seemed way too off for me though.

But my friends moved on to playing Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 2nd edition by Green Ronin. I know, some may go, but what about Fantasy Flight's version? I kid you not, if Fantasy Flight wants to send me a copy, I'll ask my amigos to give it a try but several of us have a lot of the Green Ronin books and some of the original 2nd edition books started out by Fantasy Flight and we enjoy them. Not only that, but WHAT is that game costing from Fantasy Flight? I know that it's changed formats and all that but no one at the table was even remotely interested in checking it out.

The session consisted mostly of making characters and allowing the 'newbies' a chance to test out some combat. The GM allowed us to make three rolls out of the normal book and one out of the career compendium. I had two options I find appealing due to my previous play of such characters.

The one was a human bounty hunter. One of my favorite characters was a human bounty hunter although damned if I can remember his name now. Don't know if that's old age, senility, or alcoholism taking over there. The other was a troll slayer.

Went with the troll slayer. Man I rolled like crap on many of the things that I should have been top dog at. Still, with you get that free advancement and can take it in Attack? Yup. That's a good thing for me.

I remembered more about the layout of the book than I thought I would. For example, even the GM couldn't remember where the 'real' starting equipment was. In your career you get some starting equipment but there's also a baseline of actual starting equipment and some random gold to go with it that's in a separate part of the book.

I also was surprised by how much the book reminded me of 3rd edition. Ganging up on people for a small bonus, breaking actions up into different parts and other bits. Mind you, that's just from my own poor recollections of 3rd edition at this point and the contrast/compare isn't necessarily 'fair' as a lot of things in Warhammer were either already there, like the different careers, or are still different enough, like the % parts of the system that the two games may have some similairites but are worlds away.

While I have a Weapon Skill of 40, and a Strength Bonus of 3, the real benefit being the dreaded Great Weapon and rolling two dice for damage and picking the better of the two, the real 'hero' of the fight was the halfling slinger. That dude with the 3 + 1d10, managed to take out three of the enemy while I injured one and killed another. It was good to see how things went and that combat and especially character creation, went VERY quickly.

Looking over my old bookshelf, I see that Green Ronin did a fantastic job of supporting the game. It'll be interesting to see where the GM takes us but I'll be more curious to see how the group gels. I'm so out of touch with actual play and we have a new player I haven't played with before, and another I haven't plaed with in a long time, and a few of the 'regulars' that I usually do okay with.

Anyone else find that years later they wind up picking a game up and running with it when a group happens to decided, "Hey, you know what would be cool?" I enjoy those moments I tell ya. Maybe 4th edition will be like that one day. We'll all be looking at it and be like, "Hey, remember when Wizards didn't completely dominate the game and clerics weren't mandatory?" Ha!