Monday, January 31, 2011

Sixteenth Session - Preparing for the Grand Battle


Now that the battle at Wake had been resolved, our Explorers prepared themselves for their next great venture - entering the Undred-Undred Teef.

Somewhere around Session Twelve the characters had received the second half of the Witch of Footfall's prophecy, telling about the lost fleet of the Holocene Dynasty. Indeed, the Seneschal of the group received a vision about it.

Now, our PCs made their final preparations to enter the Undred-Undred Teef and perhaps reclaim some of the lost vessels - literally a treasure trove of possibilities. As they weighed their options, the crew first took stock of the situation.

First of all, they discussed the appearance of the Tau. Even though the Tau Empire was on the other side of the galaxy, they had appeared nearby. How? To their surprise, their resident Scylla on board provided the answer. The Scylla were part of the Tau Empire and, from time to time, loaned out their ability to fold space. This was a major revelation that had them talking for some time.

Also, the crew negotiated carefully with Jeremiah Blitz, which some people may recognize from the Lure of the Expanse. After finding one of his ships disabled out by the Lucin's Breath system, they negotiated its return in exchange for a trade agreement with Blitz himself. Finally, the crew had established a trade route to their colony on Vedic, which completed one of their long standing Endevours to establish a colony of their own.

The Explorator was able to get the schematics for some personal shields for the crew. However, to do so, he had to make a deal with the heretek pirate of the Red Glaive. It will be interesting to see how this develops.

Lastly, the Rogue Trader himself had long ago put out a call at Footfall for people to join the dynasty in a daring raid upon the Undred-Undred Teef. And in response, no less than twenty ships arrived, hoping to follow the Holocene Dynasty's lead into fortune and glory.

After this session of politics, trade, and discussion - we were ready for the crew's true moment of destiny.

4 comments:

  1. I'm glad to see the posts coming more regularly once again :) , and that your campaign seems to be progressing at full steam! I know you mentioned using bits and pieces of Eye of the Needle and the rest of Lure of the Expanse, but just in general (no pun intended!), how are you enjoying the official supplements so far? I wanted to like Lure of the Expanse, but upon further reflection it kind of left me cold. I didn't end up running it (back when my knowledge of 40K wasn't so great I was kind of relying on the pre-published stuff), mostly because my group had just embarked on the journey to find a lost planet (which I had adapted from the GM Toolkit "Whisperers on the Storm" adventure) and the two goals seemed a tad too similar. I think I'm going to pick up Frozen Reaches for some of the mass combat rules, but I'm avidly awaiting Battlefleet Koronus for all of the mustering and army rules-- something that I have been sorely lacking on the improvised rules front. I'm still reading Edge of the Abyss, though and am finding most of the content pretty excellent. Sorry, one more: and speaking of Improvised Rules, how easy do you guys find it improvising in the rules as written? I'm used to WEG D6 rules and I must admit the WH percentile system isn't as easy to adlib as I thought it would be...

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  2. I've like most of the supplements so far. The only problem with them (as I find with many supplements I get) is that they've come out long after they could have been useful. That said, Lure of the Expanse was an early one. I found the info on Footfall pretty useful. And in any module or adventure series, I usually just pull the bits that I like from it. For example, I used the auction scenario in the book and I'll use one of the planets from it later as well. Also, I've used many of the NPCs featured in the book. But as far as running Lure of the Expanse as written, I won't be doing that.

    I didn't know that Frozen Reaches had rules for mass combat. I might have to check that out.

    As far as rule improvisation, I find it pretty easy. Mainly because it's a percentile system. So it's easy to eyeball how likely something is. Also, because the system is, at is heart, very much like d20. I know how to improve d20, so those skills translate well into Rogue Trader.

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  3. I agree with you there. I think there are a lot of interesting character options in Into the Storm but unfortunately most of my group can't be bothered with them since they weren't available during our initial round of character creation. But ultimately I guess that's pretty minor, they obviously had to draw the line on the content somewhere. Anyway, I was left with running the introductory pre-release scenarios (Forsaken Bounty and Dark Frontier) mostly because I wasn't as au fait with the universe at the time and didn't want to make any great missteps creating an adventure whole cloth.

    Yes, from what I've read on the FFG forums (there's a preview of the Frozen Reaches-- I hadn't realized it was even out), there is a segment with a full-scale invasion of a planet and there are some rules for assigning a core stat of Unit Strength to the various forces engaged. It's probably worth waiting for Battlefleet Koronus, but I must admit I'm intrigued by the Warpstorm Trilogy in any case. The reviewer mentioned that there aren't many great shakes in terms of the story and characters (many are a bit cliche and one-dimensional, apparently), but like many of the supplements there are some gems littered throughout.

    Speaking of which, I should be cherry-picking some of the best bits as you have done, but for some reason I felt beholden to the narrative as written-- I certainly had to embellish it (in the case of Whispers on the Storm), but I didn't diverge from the story enough, in retrospect. Anyway, enough of my prattling-- great post!

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