Warrant of Trade

The View from RuchtCon II - Part 1

2011-04-06T12:00:00.000-07:00

So, one reason I haven't been posting in a while was because I was getting ready for a big event - RuchtCon II! Basically, it's a gaming convention that my friends and I throw out of our own homes.

Staging a Gaming Convention Out of Your Home

I was going to just write a post about our latest local gaming convention. But instead, I thought I might share the love and hopefully inspire others to do the same. Yes, indeed, I'm talking about running a gaming convention right out of your own home.

If you already have a gaming group, then this will work. Because all you need is enough people who can sign up to game with you for the weekend. Yes, it's the whole weekend, but hey - it's only once in a blue moon that this will be happening.

The idea is that you and your friends get together and run a series of one-shots. Just like a regular gaming convention. If you limit each one-shot to four hours, then you can run one session on Friday, two to three on Saturday, and perhaps one on Sunday. (I don't recommend trying to pack in more than one on Sunday.)

That means that, at maximum, you might get to game for a solid twenty hours straight over the weekend, pausing only to eat and swig down some Mountain Dew.

So This Isn't New to You?

If you are already familiar with gaming conventions, then this idea shouldn't seem that foreign to you. Usually, a small gaming convention might have a schedule that looks like the lovely flyer above, or something like I have below:

Friday

7:00 pm to 11:00 pm - Session 1

Saturday

9:00 am to 1:00 pm - Session 2

(Lunch Break)

2:00 pm to 6:00 pm - Session 3

(Dinner Break)

8:00 pm to 12:00 am - Session 4

Sunday

12:00 pm to 4:00 pm - Session 5

If you are new to this, the way it would work would be on Friday, you would run a four-hour session of a game you want to run. Then, on Saturday morning, you'd run another four-hour session of either the same game or a different game. If someone else wanted to run, they could do that as well. If you have enough GMs and players, multiple sessions can be run parallel to one another, just as you see in the flyer.

Looking at all of this, at maximum you might be able to actually play five different games within the same weekend. Though usually for us, three to four is enough. I love this for being able to experience new game systems, try out crazy ideas, and just have fun.

Another way to look at this is a method of getting in a mini-campaign all in the span of a weekend. Let's say that you used to game with some buddies of yours back in the day, but you all moved away. Well, get together on just one weekend and run a mini-campaign made up of three to five chapters - each session being a chapter.

Getting Real

Now, the small sample schedule I posted above would be for the truly hardcore. The people who really, really want to get the most out of their gaming. The flyer at the top is a far more realistic outline, in my opinion.

A tight schedule does not allow anyone to socialize or just reflect on the different games being run. Two sessions on Saturday with a long lunch break lets people sleep in late and in the interim time, everyone can socialize and even get in a boardgame or two.

I find that four hours is the magic number as far as how long a game should run. Five hours makes it difficult to schedule and still have proper break time between the sessions. With four hours, you figure about half and hour for everyone to get acquainted with the game they are about to play and for the GM to explain the setting to them, if need be. At the back end of the session, there should be about fifteen minutes or so for denouement and reflection on the game.

That gives you a little over three hours of game time to run something that has about three, one-hour acts.

I'll write up how are convention went in my next post!

Hey, Where Have I Been?

2011-04-03T21:22:00.000-07:00

I'll give you a guess...

...and more. Be back very soon with some posts.

Seventeenth Session Part Three - The Big Battle

2011-03-11T06:00:00.000-08:00

A Meeting With Fate

So after dealing with the psychic storm that was unleash by a billion (not exaggerating the numbers) orcs all lining up for a WAAAGH! ... the Explorers trudged on through space, pushing their way towards the Undred-Undred Teef.

Then, they encountered something unexpected. Aid, of sorts.

The Rogue Trader Dynasty ran into a lone raider, slowly plodding its way from the Undred-Undred Teef. It turns out that the raider was part of a convoy. The very convoy of lost ships the Explorers where looking for. It was making its way slowly across the Koronus Expanse with small jumps, entirely lacking its Navigator.

It turns out that the warp storm which caused the fleet to be lost also fried the brains of the fleets' navigators, psykers, and astropaths. When the fleet finally dropped out of the Warp in the Undred-Undred Teef, they had no way of getting back, even though all ships' systems were nominal.

Stranger still was the fact the Sirocco was captained by one Adara - a woman who looks exactly like Sitara, the astropath that was killed while visiting Vedic. This was quite troubling for the Rogue Trader, who had had a illicit relationship with the astropath.

Getting even weirder, it turns out that Adara and Sebastian, the crew's Senechal had a past relationship that he doesn't remember. If you recall, Sebastian was once part of the lost Holocene Dynasty fleet. However, his ship was recovered, though he was missing large chunks of memory.

Finally, however, I was able to drop the big bombshell. One of the vessels of the missing fleet was a ship known as the Pantocrator - a mighty Grand Cruiser. A true prize for the dynasty if there ever was one.

What Should Have Been Epic...Was Kind of Epic

So, the storytelling events of the big, big session went very well. What didn't go so well was...the big battle itself. If you recall, I had a giant poster printed up of the Pantocrator and used that as a battle mat for the huge fight. The players got to bring out their Titan Walker and their Fury Interceptors. And we got to use the vehicle system in Into the Storm for the first time! Yes!

But that was the problem. Because it was the first time using that system for me, aaaaand the player had never seen the system, the battle was clunky, slow, and dry. I learned a big, big lesson here and that's if you're going to stage something big and massive, don't try to introduce "new" mechanics into it. Don't try to do too much. Stick with what you know you can do.

I put "new" in quotes because using the Battlefleet Gothic rules worked out much better for us, but I'll get into that much later.

Seventeenth Session Part Two - Interactive Cutscene

2011-02-27T13:19:00.000-08:00

Now, if you remember, when last we left, the Rogue Trader was trapped aboard the Nihontu as 50 percent of its crew went insane. Luckily, the Explorers were able to find the allied vessel and rescue their leader.

Thereafter, the Astropath was able to share with the rest of his mates what he had seen in the psychic storm that hit the entire fleet.

It was a vision - a psychic broadcast from the Undred-Undred Teef.

Since the Astropath elected to share what he saw, I proceeded with my cutscene. The vision panned down to just one planet orbiting just one star in the Undred-Undred Teef. And there, they saw a vision of war. Total war. Orks fighting orks. Orks in stompas. Tanks. Fightas. All killing each other until a transmission is received by one gretchin who rips off a piece of paper from a read out in a teetering iron base, and thrusts it into the face of his kommanda.

On that paper was one orkish symbol, but the kommanda knew it well. "Tau", he breathed.

Then, the ork kommanda contacted the three other opposing bosses, informing them of the news. "I call a krusade!" he barked, but as one of the other bosses said, "For a krusade...there can only be one warboss!"

Then, all four of the bosses activated in their respective bases an ancient teleportarium which transported the bosses to a hollowed out moon which orbited the battleworld.

I explained in the cutscene the great irony of the whole affair - the ork kommandas could have stopped the fighting and the slaughter at any time. At. Any. Time. They could have called a duel to determine a warboss eons ago, but now only did so because there was a "reason" to.

I then described each of the potential warbosses as they made their way across the hollowed out moon toward each other - and here's where the interactive part came in - the players got to vote on which boss won! So, they got to pick which ork was going to become the final warboss. What I did was to provide a picture and a short, two-sentence description of each.

Da Monsta: a hulking, 40 foot tall super-ork

See-Not: A stealthy, cyber-ork. I told them to basically think, "The Predator".

Jawless: A horribly mangled and mutilated ork with no jaw, and limited capacity to speak.

Auld One: Very much the "standard" ork warboss, who happens to be quite old and somewhat cunning.

I had the players vote for two orks a piece. I figured if they just voted for one, it would just be one ork who won overwhelmingly. In the end, Da Monsta and Auld One got the highest votes, with the Auld One winning. See-Not got no votes at all, because he scared everyone too much. Apparently, stealthy 40k orks are scary. Note to anyone who wants to steal this idea from me, the scarier you make something, it may be that the players are less likely to vote for it.

With that, I then finished the cutscene, describing the ork battle with the Auld One winning in the end. In this manner, the players themselves got to pick the villain of the last quarter of the campaign. Kind of neat, I thought.

Cutscenes in Roleplaying Games

2011-02-20T07:00:00.000-08:00

Way back in my college years, there were many video games that dominated our time - Warcraft, Warcraft II, Doom - the list goes on. But one game in particular sticks out in my mind - Star Wars: TIE Fighter for DOS.

Not only was it a really cool game - but it had a profound effect on how we roleplayed. One of the more rewarding experiences in TIE Fighter were its cutscenes. Every once in a while, you were rewarded with a cinematic, Star Wars-esque scene of how your character had influenced the larger Star Wars universe. In the example above, you are shown how you, a lone TIE Fighter pilot had a hand in bringing an Imperial traitor to "justice". (See above)

Now, remember that back then, very few games had cutscenes. Particularly flight simulators. In any case, the cutscenes in TIE Fighter worked very well for a few reasons.

For the most part, each cutscene didn't reveal too much. In the game, "you" took on the role of a TIE Fighter pilot, so most scenes never gave you information you were not supposed to have.
The cutscenes were short, sweet, and to the point.
The cutscenes also were a form of reward. You got to watch a (what at the time was) a cool motion graphic.
The scenes gave the game an epic feel, because it showed how your actions in each individual mission ultimately affected the fate of the Empire and the rest of the galaxy.
The scenes allowed you to get to know the villains and antagonists in the story, because you certainly weren't going to meet them in space while flying a starship.

We enjoyed these cutscenes so much that we immediately started incorporating them into our own games, unconsciously following the rules above. Now, with time and distance, I can see why they worked.

What a Cutscene Is

In a table-top RPG, a cutscene is a moment in the campaign where the player characters are not present. The GM describes the scene, the characters, and what happens. For example, you might feature a scene where a king talks about the problems within the kingdom, or a council of Imperial Inquistors discussing the latest heresy. It might feature either allies, neutrals, or antagonists. For example, it might show a the campaign's main villain committing an atrocity or plotting his next move.

Incorporating Cutscenes into a Game

I've found over the years that when I talk about cutscenes in text or on the net, there will always be a number of people who balk at the idea. Critics of this idea state that it creates too much of a strain on the players. It's too much to ask of them to make a disconnect from the information in the cutscene and the information that their character know. Others say it jerks players out of the moment and puts them into someone else's shoes, straining the sense of disbelief.

These criticisms can be very true if cutscenes are done incorrectly. However, the way we used them really addressed those problems. For one, any cutscene we used never gave away information the players didn't already know. For example, a cutscene in Rogue Trader might have the Explorers landing on a planet that was ravaged by orks. As the Explorers comb the planet, they piece together what happened. Then, the GM describes the events in a cutscene, rather than just telling them the cold, hard facts. The point here is that the PCs would have discovered all of the information you had in your cutscene anyway. But the scene you craft helps put the events into perspective and makes your campaign setting seem larger. Hey look, stuff happens when the PCs aren't there...

A cutscene also might be form of reward for players. For example, when the villain of the campaign finds out that the player characters have interfered with his long-range plans again, he might lose his temper or have to go before his superiors and explain himself. Again, it's not a hard stretch that the player characters know the villain has been frustrated. These sorts of cutscenes will often get players high-fiving each other.

To avoid breaking the players out of the game, a cutscene is best used right before a break. The PCs finish what they are doing, and right before people go pour themselves a pint, you give them a little teaser or reward scene to think about.

When it's all said and done, however, cutscenes are simply not for everyone. It may simply not be something that you would want to do in your game because it doesn't fit your style. That's totally fine. This is just my take on them.

My Interactive Cutscene in Rogue Trader

For our big pre-holiday session, I wanted to make it grand, big, and epic. For that reason, I crafted a cutscene for that game. However, when scripting it, I noted that it was fairly long. The thing is, no one wants to see you soliloquy for ten minutes. Even five minutes is pretty long.

So, what I did to break it up a little was to make the cutscene interactive. Huh. As I write this, I see that I've gone on long enough. I'll talk about my interactive cutscene in the next post. Instead, here's a little reward: all of the cutscenes from the old Star Wars: TIE Fighter game.

Prepping for a Big Set Piece

2011-02-17T07:07:00.000-08:00

So, for one of the set pieces I had set up for the big battle in the Undred-Undred Teef, I had pictured a huge battle across the hull of a space cruiser, using all of the cool minis that my friend Nick from E-Bay. What is interesting is that I didn't just come up with this idea from the blue, but rather from the fact that he was loaning me all of these neat sci-fi minis.

So, I set out to produce a table surface worthy of a climactic vehicle battle. To that end, I printed out a giant picture of a 40k space cruiser. And the idea for the big print out didn't come from me either, really. It came from my time with the Minions, and their copious use of Kinko's finesse. It just goes to show you the old teacher mantra that is said over and over in the smoke-filled corners of teacher's lounges: "Don't re-invent the wheel. Rob ideas and techniques from other people."

It was relatively simple to do. I took a simple 40k cruiser picture like the one below, printed it out, and then took it to Kinko's and had it blown up to poster size. Using their poster maker cost me about $20 and some change, so it was cheap and expensive. Is $20 a ton of money? Not really, but it might be pretty steep considering that you are doing this for a one-shot affair.

The original pic...
Now, the blow-up model - 8 and a half feet long. Not a bad battle-mat.

Now, the giant picture could simply serve as the battlemap for the game! Simple, easy, and very impressive on the table. The funniest thing was, when we started playing, I had to explain that the picture was still not to scale. An actual cruiser to scale with the minis would have actually been larger than even the printout.

Here's a shot to show the perspective of the minis on the hull of the cruiser.

Now, these pictures of the actual game (forgot my camera), but some staging to give you an idea of what it would have looked like. There are no squares on the improvised battlemat, so old-fashioned measuring tape worked just fine. Yes, you'll see some chaos raiders there. Those were stand-ins for ork fighta-bommas. Didn't have the money to spring for a squadron of real ones.

Seventeenth Session - Part 1: Journey to the Undred-Undred Teef

2011-02-14T07:03:00.000-08:00

What I Had Planned

So this was going to be the last session that we had before the holidays. I was really trying to make it a big one. As it turned out the group was about to embark on a tremendous endevour - a journey to the Undred-Undred Teef to rescue what they believed to be 10 missing vessels from their Dynasty's fleet. A successful rescue would mean that the Explorers would now actually have a fleet of ships, not just a single frigate.

The set pieces I had planned out were:

1) A fateful meeting with a lost vessel - one of the Holocene Dynasty's lost ships. And a chance to spotlight the Seneschal and Rogue Trader.

2) An interactive cutscene.

3) Big space battle where the PCs had to get their ship into position against a large number of ork vessels. It would feature ork ram ships which would be raiders who attempted to just ram the PCs ship over and over.

4) A vehicle battle where the PCs would deploy vehicles onto the hull of a giant space cruiser and fight across the hull to get to a particular point.

5) A boarding mission to get to a critical part of the ship.

As I type this up, I can see now that this was entirely too much to try to cram into one session. Well, live and learn.

The Tau and a Warning

As the Explorers set out for the Undred-Undred Teef, the passed by the Lucin's Breath system and there learned that the Tau were performing massive excavations of the planet that they had raided, evidently looking for something big and buried in the ground. It wasn't hard to make a connection to the hidden alien vault on Vedic.

The Rogue Trader himself spent his time while traveling to the Undred-Undred Teef aboard the allied vessels of the rag-tag fleet they had assembled. Basically consorting with the other captains, making preparations for the raid, coordinating plans, etc.

Then, deep into their journey, they suddenly ran into a strange vergence in the Warp. A massive, rapidly expanding bubble of psychic energy. Large as a supernova, and rolling across parsecs of space.

The crew's Astropath was skilled enough to basically function like a lightning rod and ground the psychic phenomenon - preventing the entire crew of the Ferral Wolf from going mad. However, as I told the players, the other vessels following them into the Undred-Undred Teef might not be so lucky. After a few rolls, I determined that they had lost some of their allied ships had been lost.

That's when the Seneschal's player said, "Wait. Which vessels were lost? Remember, the Rogue Trader was on one of them."

I let the players make a luck roll...and they blew it. Which meant that the Rogue Trader himself was on one of the vessels that had been lost. Not only that, he was on the Nihontu, a statted-out NPC vessel. Captained by Lady Kitsune. (Both the Nihontu and Lady Kitsune [appearing as Lady Sun Lee] appear in Lure of the Expanse.)

I inwardly winced. I liked that NPC and that ship. I had had plans for it. But, for me, part of the fun of roleplaying is dealing with the unexpected. Dealing with loss. Wrestling with stuff that throws your plans to hell.

Madness Aboard the Nihontu

What happened next was a desperate, off- the-cuff adventure. The Rogue Trader himself was aboard the bridge of the Nihontu when 50% of its crew suddenly went mad with the power of the psychic disturbance. The ship's Astropath was able to prevent the other 50% of the crew from succumbing to insanity, but that was sadly not enough.

As comrades and even family members turned on each other, Lady Kitsune made for way to the Navigator's chambers. I had the Rogue Trader basically make a Skill Challenge roll to see if they could fight their way there. (Basically, I had him make a series of tests, needing X number of degrees of success total.)

He failed, so I ruled that in the ensuing battles to get to their goal, he took some wounds. 3d10 worth. I rolled the dice and the wounds were enough to actually put him in critical wounds. He went unconscious. When he woke up, their was Lady Kitsune, barely alive but disemboweled. There was nothing to be done for her. For me, this stung again because she was a named NPC who I had some plans for. But, I thought to myself, if you're going to have a player roll and that player fails, there needs to be some tangible consequences.

To honor her, the Rogue Trader made his way to the room where the Nihontu's Warrant of Trade was kept, intending to give it back to her Dynasty. There, he meant the Nihontu's own Arch-Militant, deep in the throes of madness and singing to his own power sword.

Now, the Rogue Trader found himself with Critical Wounds facing down an unscratched arch-militant in power armor and wielding a power sword. Fortunately for him, the arch-militant was quite mad and not fighting his best (he neglected to parry or dodge), but all the same, a single hit from the power sword would easily have cleaved the Rogue Trader in two. The Rogue Trader did have an edge, however. The Luminous Reproach - an artifact weapon the crew had gained in a previous session.

Meanwhile, the rest of the Explorers made a mad dash to attempt a rescue of their captain. I had them make a Skill Challenge test and they passed it to find the Nihontu, and then I had the Arch-Militant of the Ferral Wolf make another one to see if he could get there in time. Patrick (the AM's player) blew his test out of the water, so I let him describe how the rescue attempt went.

He proceeded to describe his great, hulking character plowing through the walls of the Nihontu itself, shearing away bulkheads, and power-fisting through beams to save his lord and master. Upon their arrival, they came upon the Rogue Trader who had just put down the rival Arch-Militant with two solid strikes of the Luminous Approach. They took the Warrant of Trade from the Nihontu and left to return to the Ferral Wolf.

Thoughts on Using Skill Challenges

While Skill Challenges are not in the Rogue Trader rules specifically, they are hinted at in the form of Exploration Challenges in the game. They also appear somewhat in the form of Social Challenges from Into the Storm.

The whole Skill Challenge thing came about with 4th Edition D&D and has been quite controversial every since. There are some who praise it for allowing more free-form, free-flowing storytelling; but others decry it for being used to throw dice instead of roleplay. (Some cool comparison of 4e vs. Rogue Trader skill challenges here.)

Unfortunately, I have seen it used far more for the latter rather than the former. Stuck in a swap with your buddies? Skill challenge! Okay, you're out. Need to sneak out of a city? Skill challenge! You're out!

In my case, what I've tried to do is to use Skill Challenges to fulfill some of the core themes of Rogue Trader. This is one of the harder aspects of running a Rogue Trader game - capturing the spirit of the game itself. The game that is implied in-between the lines of text in the core rulebook. One of the ideas that I gleaned from the Rogue Trader Core Rulebook was the idea of "fast-fowarding to the good stuff".

The whole idea of an Endeavour (collapsing large, board actions into a simple card or list), really points to the idea of campaigns in which you can participate in world-shaking events such as conquering a planet, but each of these Herculean tasks is only supposed to take a portion of your campaign.

To that end, I've often used Skill Challenges - not to bypass the cool roleplaying in the game - but to essentially fast-forwards to the most exciting and climactic parts. For example, I could have rolled out the battlemaps and allowed the Rogue Trader to move his mini up the hallway, fighting as he went, and then the rest of the players could have watched him for over an hour. And then he could have sat idly by while the rest of the party marched down the miniatures map in an attempt to rescue him, all the while fighting crazed crew members. Such an encounter might actually have been very cool with the proper maps and figures. However, it would have also taken the entire session and most likely the next one as well.

Instead, I used the Skill Challenges to get to the good parts of the story so that all of the players could move on to get to what they were aiming for in the first place...the Undred-Undred Teef. In the end, it seemed to work out well for us. Everyone had a good time.

Glorious Failure

2011-02-10T07:00:00.000-08:00

Now, for most of this blog I've been crowing about my own successes here. And overall, the campaign has been a tremendous success. My players have said as much.

But it hasn't been all Hollywood Blockbusters and Oscar Awards all around. There have been a great deal of problems in the game. It's easy to celebrate your own successes on a public forum. It's sometimes a bit more difficult to talk about what you did wrong. Especially out in public.

But let's talk about that. My failures in this campaign. I was going to write a single post about the subject, but then I found myself writing pages of text. Clearly, this isn't going to be something I tackle with a single post. So, we'll probably see a series of these throughout the blog.

A Tough Game

The Rogue Trader campaign has easily been the hardest campaign I've run in recent memory. The only other game that gave me this much trouble dates back to '03-'04. Yeah. Seven to eight years ago. I still remember it vividly. And no, that was not any game that I played with the Minions of the Monster Master. With the Minions, we were fortunate enough to knock it out of the park almost every time. (Much love to the Minions, BTW, for mentioning one of our old, great campaigns. They even put up pics!)

But even though I remember the '03-'04 campaign being fraught with mistakes, misfires, and downright failures - I also remember having a really good time, and learning a lot from what went wrong. More than I learned from my more successful campaigns.

Outside Problems

One problem our campaign has faced (and we've been extremely lucky to weather this) is a changing player roster. We lost players. Gained players. Had players come and go. Thought we were going to lose players, but then didn't.

The game started out with the loss of Casey, one of our most energetic and enthusiastic players. Losing a good player is very difficult, especially if that player brings a lot of energy to the table. A player who is like a cheerleader for your campaign is, in my opinion, invaluable. Players like that get everyone excited about the game, and maintain its momentum.

Then, we had another player Nick, who had to leave the game for months at a time due to work. We had another player, Doug, who thought was going to have to leave. To fill his spot, we invited another player, Rob, into the game. And then, it turned out that Doug didn't have to leave.

All of this resulted in a game that eventually got too big. At the top, it had a total of seven players. In my opinion, that's too many for a game like Rogue Trader. Because of the way I'm running it (sort of like Birthright), each character has to command either a sizable group of people, or make key decisions about important parts of the ship. This means that often, the game will focus solely on one character. In a big group, it's very difficult to get that spotlight onto every single person. Also, a game of this kind is going to feature a lot of long periods of political discussion and interplay. In a big group, quieter players can lose out.

I don't know if I would call this a mistake per se, because it was no one's fault, but it was probably one of the biggest problems in our game.

Now, luckily, this continually changing roster of players did not kill our campaign, as it might have with many groups I've been in. I think we can credit that to the fact that our group as a standing, set-in-stone, gaming night. But making game night a regular thing, our campaigns don't tend to die off before the end. As a result, so far, we've completed three different campaigns in about six years. That means that we seen the beginning, middle, and end to three different campaigns.

How the Game is Supposed to be Run?

In my opinion, if you read the adventure in the back of the Rogue Trader core book, or read through Lure of the Expanse, the designers seem to want you to run the game like Star Trek. Even though you command 30,000 or even 100,000 people, you and the command crew are the only ones that really count. So, of course you deploy to the unexplored planet with your Navigator. Of course you enter the ruins with your lead Astropath. Can you run a Rogue Trader game like that successfully? Of course you can. And I think you can do it very well, because the game is designed to support that sort of play.

However, we had already run a game very much like this in our previous campaign in the Iron Kingdoms. I wanted something different. I wanted a game that felt like you were in charge of a dynasty, not just a ship. A game that would be like Battlestar Galactica, but where you don't play Starbuck or Apollo...you play Admiral friggin' Adama.

Now, a game like that can have it's problems. Like T-Bone of the Minions stated, you can end up with a game where all you do is manage people. As T-Bone manages people in his day job, he surely didn't want to do that on game night! So you have to be careful. Another problem that I ran into was that I've never run a game like that. Nor are games of that nature ubiquitous.

At that point, what I wished I had understood was that I was now taking the game in a direction far outside the confines of the rules and how the rules were even organized. Sure, there are things like the Endeavour System or Profit Factor which help create a sense of epic-ness, but there simply aren't (currently) solid rules on mass combat or mass ship combat. There is a small write-up on squad-based combat, but it's very short and unfortunately shallow.

What I wished I had done was....

What I Should Have Done

I should have done was understand the game a bit more before running it. And then implemented some solid, defined house rules. Things like house rules for mass combat. Mass ship combat. Things like that.

The reason I say that is that often I've had to do these things sort of on the fly. And while it has worked, the small sub-systems I've come up with have not been consistent. It sort of cheats the players, because they have a hard time knowing what to expect. We'll see how I do implementing these things from here on out.

The Orks is Comin'!

2011-02-08T12:29:00.000-08:00

Well, for the big battle, I made up a bunch of stats for ork vehicles as well. I didn't use most of them, because...well, you'll see later...but I made them up anyway.

Not using stats that I make up is not bad by any means. There are always opportunities down the road for these things to show up.

One thing that I tried to do was to keep it close to the 40k stats as I possibly could. Simply because it was a design challenge and because the Warhammer 40,000 rules have fantastic flavor. And if I could capture some of that flavor in my own stats, it would have been a victory for me.

Ork Blasta Tank

Type: Ground Vehicle Tactical Speed: 10m
Cruising Speed: 50 kph Manuoeverability: -5
Structural Integrity: 25 Size: Enormous (+20 to hit -20 to conceal)
Armour: Front 40, Side 30, Rear 20 Special: Unreliable – 20 to repair
Crew: Driver, Gunner, Crew Chief

Weapons:
Position: Gunner
Great Big Shoota (Front); Range: 300 to 700 m (1d5+2 AUs), Heavy, RoF: S/-/-; Damage: see special; Clip: ?, Reload Full; Special: Random Fire – Roll 1d5 to determine what kind of shell is fired.
1) Boom Shell 3d10+20, Pen 20
2) Tank Hamma Shell 8d10, Pen 0
3) Burna Shell - vehicle catches fire, 1d10 to structural integrity until put out
4) Scrap Shell – 3d10, Pen 0, Vehicle takes a 1d5 crit hit
5) Dud

Ork Fighta Bomma

Type: Craft Tactical Speed: 20m / 22 AUs
Cruising Speed: 1,600 kph / 5 VU Manuoeverability: -5
Structural Integrity: 25 Size: Massive (+30 to hit -30 to conceal)
Armour: Front 25, Side 25, Rear 20
Crew: Pilot, Crew Chief/Bomma, Forward Gunner, Rear Gunner

Weapons:
Position: Forward Gunner
Twin-Linked Big Shoota x1 (Front); Range: 600m (6 AUs), Heavy; RoF: S/-/-, Damage: 5d10+10 I, Pen 10; Clip: -; Reload -; Special: Twin-linked (+20 to hit, 2 shots fired)

Position: Rear Gunner
Auto Cannons x2 (Sides); Range: 300m (3 AUs), Heavy; RoF: S/2/5, Damage: 4d10+5 I, Pen 4; Clip: 60, Reload 2 Full; Special: None

Position: Bomma
Big Boms: Range: 0; RoF: -; Damage: 3d10+20 X, Pen 20; Clip: -; Reload 2 Full; Special: Blast (10)

Ork Stompa

Type: Walker Tactical Speed: 5 m
Cruising Speed: 30 kph / 1 AU Manuoeverability: -20
Structural Integrity: 65 Size: Massive (+30 to hit -30 to conceal)
Armour: Front 35, Side 35, Rear 30
Crew: 2 Drivers

Weapons:
Position: ?
Twin-Linked Big Shoota x1 (Front); Range: 600m (6 AUs), Heavy; RoF: S/-/-, Damage: 5d10+10 I, Pen 10; Clip: -; Reload -; Special: Twin-linked (+20 to hit, 2 shots fired)

Position: ?
Deth Kannon x1 (Front, Sides); Range: 600 m (6 AUs), Heavy, RoF: S/-/-; Damage: 4d10+20 E, Pen 15; Clip: 250, Reload -; Special: Inaccurate (No bonus for aiming)

Supa Skorcha x1 (Front, Sides); Range: 30 m (0 AUs), Heavy, RoF: S/-/-; Damage: Special; Clip: -, Reload 2 Full; Special: catches enemy on fire, 1d10 to structural integrity until put out
>

Making Up Stats for the Big Fight

2011-02-05T07:03:00.000-08:00

So I knew that I wanted to stage a really epic and momentous battle in the Undred-Undred Teef. I So, as I did with the Battle at Footfall, I started sketching out set-pieces. One of the set-pieces I started arranging was a big vehicle battle.

Some time ago, towards the beginning of the campaign, even, the Explorers had discovered a Reaver Titan and believe me, they never let me forget it. And on top of that, one of my players went out and bought a large quantity of epic scale miniatures. Including a titan mini! No, not that Titan mini. No one in my group has that kind of money lying around. In any case, such an opportunity cannot be missed.

Look at the cornucopia of minis Nick bought for the campaign! There are troops on bases, here, mostly. As well as some tanks (grey-colored on the right). The Reaver Titan is prominent, of course.

Here is a close-up of the Titan and some tanks. I painted the Titan.

I went about making up a large scale vehicle battle using the Into the Storm rules. The only problem was that there were only a few stats for vehicles in Into the Storm. I had to make a lot of them up. Luckily, there was still the Dark Heresy apocrypha, which contains stats for vehicles. But those stats were incomplete compared to the Into the Storm write ups.

So, I had to make a number of the vehicles up. Particularly the Reaver Titan, of course.

I thought I would share them here, and perhaps save some fellow GM the trouble of having to do it. No doubt people will see something wrong in these. No problem at all. It may at least give others a starting point.

As I were, I only needed to make up three stats for the good-guy team. The Leman Russ, the Reaver Titan, and some rules for their mysterious Scylla flyer. The team bought Calixis-pattern Fury Interceptors and the Into the Storm book already had rules for those.

Rogue Trader Vehicles

Leman Russ Tank

Type: Ground Vehicle Tactical Speed: 10m

Cruising Speed: 50 kph Manuoeverability: -5

Structural Integrity: 35 Size: Enormous (+20 to hit -20 to conceal)

Armour: Front 40, Side 30, Rear 20 Special:

Crew: Driver, Gunner, Crew Chief

Weapons:

Position: Gunner

Twin-Linked Autocannon x1 (Front); Range: 300 m, Heavy, RoF: S/4/10; Damage: 4d10+5, Pen 4; Clip: 40, Reload: 2 Full; Special: Twin-Linked (+20 to hit)

Turrent-Mounted Lascannon x1 (Front, Sides, Back); Range: 300 m, Heavy; RoF: S/-/-; Damage: 5d10+10, Pen 10; Clip: 10; Reload: 2 Full; Special: Twin-Linked (+20 to hit, Fires 2 shots)

Reaver Titan

Type: Walker Tactical Speed: 5 m

Cruising Speed: 45 kph / 1 AU Manuoeverability: -20

Structural Integrity: 65 Size: Massive (+30 to hit -30 to conceal)

Armour: Front 40, Side 45, Rear 40 Void Shields: 40%

Crew: 1 Drivers, 1 Tech Priest, 2 Servitors

Weapons:

Position: Tech-Priest

Carapace Mounted Rocket Launcher (Front/Left/Right); Range: 75km (750 AUs), Heavy; RoF: S/4/8, Damage: 3d10+20 X, Pen 15; Clip: 24; Reload -; Special: Burst and Auto Fire

Position: Pilot

Arm Mounted Turbo Laser Battery x2 (Front); Range: 700 m (7 AUs), Heavy, RoF: S/-/-; Damage: 8d10 E, Pen 10; Clip: 1, Reload 2 Full; Special: Blast (10)

I'll put the ork vehicles I made up in the next post.

Sixteenth Session - Preparing for the Grand Battle

2011-01-31T07:00:00.000-08:00

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.

The Problem with Knowledge Skills

2011-01-28T07:01:00.000-08:00

One problem I’ve always encountered in roleplaying games is the “knowledge check” dilemma. At most tables I’ve played at, if a player has a knowledge skill, they activate it by rolling the skill. If they succeed, the GM tells them aloud what they know about a particular topic. Then, the player does one of two things. They either repeat the same thing that the GM just said…which now seems redundant. Or they simply turn to the rest of the group and say, “I share this with the party.”

Either way, this results in the spotlight being moved away from the character with knowledge skills. Furthermore, this makes knowledge-based characters extremely boring to play. If you’re a wise, knowledgeable character, your speciality is to have GM to tell you stuff while you passively listen.

In most of my games, I’ve tried to combat this with the sidebar. I pull the player aside, tell them what their character knows, then let them go back to the table and relate it to the group. This has worked brilliantly in the past. Often, when the player retells the information, they will put their own spin on it, making the information slightly colored or biased – which it should be. Also, it enhances roleplay, since the players can talk about the new information in character.

However, with a big group, this has proved detrimental. Constantly pulling players aside with a big group pauses the action, and with a group as large as ours, it often caused more distractions.

So, what to do? I ended up robbing an idea from myself.

Some History

Back in the day, I used to write a lot of adventures for the Living Death Campaign for the RPGA.

For those not familiar with living campaigns or organized play, the idea is that you make a character using a typical set of RPG rules and then are able to take that same character to different conventions around the country and advance them. Eventually, organized play evolved so that it incorporated home play as well. Now, you can take a character from your own "home game" and plug him/her into just about any convention with gaming in it around the country.

During those years, I noted that often certain skill checks would come up time after time. The Living Death Campaign was a horror game set in 1890's Gothic Earth, so there was always a lot of rolling "Forbidden Lore" or other types of investigative skills.

In the modules that I wrote, I started putting in bulleted lists of information, telling the result of different kinds of rolls that I knew were going to inevitably come up. For example, in a module, I would have a list of information that you might be able to get from a Forbidden Lore check. And this information was incremental, telling how much information would be released based on how high the skill check was.

Cards with Information

So, to avoid the incessant sidebars, I've started printing up pre-written blocks of information for different kinds of skill checks throughout the game. I try to make the cards look attractive and aesthetic. That way, the players know they are getting something special. And they are easy to hold onto for players who like to do that sort of thing.

For really big, earth-shattering revelations, I can even dress up the information cards with a picture or something like that. This really calls attention to the information and gives the player something visual to latch onto.

The best part? It doesn't slow down the game at all. I just pass it to the player and the game rolls on without pause. This doesn't mean that I never write hand-written notes. I still do, because things always come up that I don't anticipate. But even with a hand-written note, I often have to pause the action. Also, in a short, quickly-written note, I often don't get a lot of information across. So while I'm a fan of quickly written notes, I like these pre-written notes even better.

This might seem hard to do, because you think it difficult to predict what skills would come up during a game. But I think that in most games are certain number of knowledge skills always seem to come up. Also, as the GM, you know what is coming in the session. If you know that Mysterious Species X is going to arrive in the next session, you can craft all kinds of pre-written notes for the players ahead of time based on Species X.

I also color code these cards of information. For a basic pass on a skill test, the Explorers get a black bordered card. For more degrees of success, they get a red-bordered card. Etc.

The higher the degrees of success, the more cards of information they get. So that's another bonus. Someone who rolls really high gets a tangible reward that they can hold in their hand for what they know and how well they know it.

The only drawback to this is that you have to be pretty firm-minded as GM. After printing out an information card and cutting it out, you have to be willing to say to a player, "Nope. You don't get this one. You didn't roll high enough." And then, you have to be willing to put that card away - or even throw it into the recycling bin.

Staging a Battle...And Keeping the Horror

2011-01-25T07:00:00.000-08:00

Maintaining tension and horror during a fight can be difficult. Often times, if the player characters are facing some unnamed horror from beyond, the tension and suspense can be high. But the moment you break out the dice and rolling to hit, it dissolves the horror.

In my opinion, there are a number of ways to handle this.

Forget the Horror, Just Have Fun

Sometimes it's okay to let go of the horror mood when a fight breaks out. A battle can be a necessary release value on the tension. It can be a nice carrot to throw to the players when they have been dealing with tense, unrelenting fear.

This is especially important because often a horror game or horror scene can become frustrating for the players. For example, if some Terrible Thing from Beyond is eating the ship that the characters are in and cannot be stopped by anything, after a while, it can get frustrating.

Having a full-frontal combat can be that moment where the characters say, "Okay, we're backed into a corner. Now let's give it to them!" Which makes it even more rewarding. Or it can be a small release from the continual building pressure you have in your game.

Not Just a Straight Up Fight
If you think about a movie in which a fight breaks out without losing that sense of horror, how do they do it? Often times, movies will feature a battle with the film's nemesis which is not up-front and in your face, but instead a conflict full of mystery and surprises.

Think about the lightsaber battles in both Empire Strikes Back and in Aliens. In Empire, Luke first faces Darth Vader in a cave, and strikes off his head...only to find his own face beneath Vader's mask. It's a very dark, psychedelic, and horrific moment. Mainly because it's a fight where cause and effect have been turned on its head. In other words, it's not just a straight up fight. Imagine a scenario where firing your guns at a creature makes the problem worse? For example, what if they burst into swarms of strange insects? Or bleed living blood which crawls across the floor?

The second lightsaber battle with Vader that Luke has still has horror elements in it. He's trapped down in the bowels of Cloud City, a hellish environment. Vader appears out of nowhere and then vanishes when pushed off a ledge. Then, he appears out of nowhere again in a darkened hallway. So here, it's a fight where the antagonist disappears and reappears. Think about how Strahd fights in the classic Ravenloft module.

Aliens is another great example of a movie that has very intense battles, but never loses its sense of horror. In the first battle against the Aliens, the marines walk straight into the nest and all hell breaks lose. Aliens are crawling out of the walls (literally), descending from the ceiling, and stinging them from behind.

And all of this happens without us getting a good sense of exactly what they look like.

Again, you have to be careful not to frustrate your players. If they are constantly being assaulted by things they cannot see and shooting at things that just disappear they will likely get more exasperated than anything else. Let them get in a few hits and kill a few things.

That's why I'd recommend something like out of the first Viking conflict with the Wendol in the 13th Warrior. The Wendol come crawling out of the woodwork (literally), but in the end the warriors are able to strike and kill a few.

Running From Something
Sometimes, a fight need not be a "we're going to kill you or you're going to kill us" event. The reason that this can be detrimental to horror is that in most RPGs, there is an unspoken expectation that the PCs will win the conflict. Most players want there to be a chance to fail in any conflict, but they usually want that chance to be small. When it looks like the PCs are going to lose, typically what you see around the table is frustration. Or disheartenment.

This can produce a damned if you do, damned if you don't scenario while running a horror scene with combat. Either the bad guys stand up, fight, take their medicine and lose...or everyone at the table is depressed because they can't win.

This is different, however, if it the DM sends a clear message that it's time to run. For example, if a horde of 1,000 zombies start crawling through the window, then most players will know that it's time to run. They won't have a problem having their characters high-tail it out of there.

This is a great chance for horror, because you don't need to have to worry about players wanting to know where which mini is on the battlemap. You don't need to worry about players trying desperately trying to figure out how to 'win' the scenario. Instead, you can just throw different horror elements at the player characters and have them respond in a more organic fashion.

How I Used it Last Game

So last game, I had the characters fight statues which appears and disappeared from existence. During the entire fight, I tried to maintain some element of the unknown. For example, the statues never moved, though their expressions changed from time to time. (Think the angels from Doctor Who.)

What the Explorers were attacked by were strange, invisible shredding forces that surrounded the statues as they appeared and reappeared. At one point, one of the characters tried to use his hellgun while adjacent to one of the statues, but you can't use a hellgun while in "melee". So I justified this by saying that as he raised his weapon to fire, he could feel all these little hands grabbing at his weapon, trying to pull it away from him. That kind of thing.

Throughout the encounter, I tried to keep the nature of their opponents mysterious and unknown. The idea was to give them something beyond just a mini to pound on, beyond just a few stats to conflict with, but a continually unfolding mystery.

Anyhow, the entire encounter made me remember that I had been asked about maintain horror in a table top fight. This was my attempt to do just that.

Fifteenth Session - The Dark Secrets of the Ferral Wolf

2011-01-20T08:32:00.000-08:00

One of the overriding themes of the Warhammer 40k Universe is that of the hidden darkness. The forces of Chaos that are ever-present. And in this session, the crew dealt with that.

The Battle-Psyker's player was long absent due to work and had his character wander off into the ship's swelter decks in an attempt to engage in some drunken debauchery. That was his "in character" excuse for not being present for a number of games. This worked out fine, because his character, while powerful, is not part of the command crew. So, it's not like he would have been missed in day-to-day operations.

Upon Nick's return, his character, while in a drunken stupor wandered into the hidden vault of the Ferral Wolf. Half-because he was inebriated, and half-because he was...beckoned there by something.

What hidden vault?

In the last session, the characters learned that their ship, the Ferral Wolf, was founded by Inquisitor Holocene. And it was created so that it could serve as a prison for a powerful daemonhost - Melchiah. Even now, a living piece of Melchiah is imprisoned aboard the Ferral Wolf. The other four pieces of Melchiah are out there, somewhere, and they are all beckoning to each other. They are destined to be joined again at some point.

The Battle-Pskyer wandered towards the vault but was stopped in time by the crew before something happened. It turned out that he was just investigating it. Even so, this was the first time that any of the player characters had dared to investigate the daemonhost sanctum.

In the heart of the ship, they found a smallish chamber which sported large, arched doors surrounded by strange, glowing lichens and fungi. Standing about the runed-encrusted portal were a number of statues, leaning at odd angles. Each was faded from age, but still bore an archaic smile.

With the presence of the command crew near the vault, the doors to the chamber made an attempt to open. With no one present who knew about the matters of Chaos, the Arch-Militant used his power-armor and power fist to close the vault back in an inelegant fashion - marring some of the hexagrammic wards on the door.

The rest of the session was then dealing with the resulting fallout from this. The crew set up a guard 24/7 at the vault doors, worried about what might happen. And predictably - things began to get strange.

All around the vault doors, were statues set at odd angles. On the view screens the crew set up, the statues seemed to suddenly shift position from time to time, though on site no one could confirm this phenomenon.

As strange and unexplainable events mounted, most of the crew went below to study what was going on. The result was a battle between the crew and the statues. Instead of having them animate, I had the statues disappear and reappear from reality. But so long as they were intact, the Explorers and their retinue were shredded apart by unseen and mighty forces. The Seneschal even died! (Fortunately he was able to burn a Fate Point to survive.)

Back from the Holidays!

2011-01-03T07:57:00.000-08:00

Well it's been a while since my last post. The holidays had me busy. Look for a lot of new posts coming in the new year. We have two sessions and quite a few posts on combat, figgity bits, vehicles, and more!

Staging the Battle at Wake

2010-11-24T08:00:00.000-08:00

For the battle at Wake, I was able to have a ready-made cutout of the planet. It was rather nice to have, on the table, the very same picture of the planet I had been showing them. (Even though it wasn't to scale like I thought. Ah, well.)

Another great victory was that all of the models used were fairly accurate. The Ferral Wolf is represented by the red ship below, closest to the planet. It's a frigate in the RPG and represented by an accurate model. The Nihontu, Kitsune's ship is a Rogue Trader cruiser and is also represented by an accurate model. The rest of the vessels are raiders or frigates - which all came from my friend Nick's collection for Battle Fleet Gothic.

The Explorers faced off against 10 Chaos ships. Well, it just so happened that we had more than enough models to cover that! We even had a model that could represent the taken over Imperial Battlecruiser.

Here's a better look at the Chaos fleet. Quite imposing to see it lined up and bearing down on you.

All for now.

Staging the Battle with the Tau

2010-11-20T08:15:00.000-08:00

So, for this session, I knew that it was going to involve two, (possibly three) epic space battles. Also, it would be the introduction of the Tau to the campaign. I really wanted the Tau to leave an impression. I chose them as a campaign nemesis because they are so different from what we've traditionally dealt with in the 40k universe. In Dark Heresy, the players had experienced all kinds of Warp-tainted enemies. Now, it was time to introduce something totally different. Something totally...alien.

Painting up a Tau Ship

The Tau ship was really easy to paint up. I got a Merchant Class ship, because I liked its look the best. Just based it black with a dry brush of grey. Then, with a fine brush, I went back in and put in the gunmetal on the cannons and added some red highlights. Overall, I was very impressed with the model. It's 100% metal for one, and much more importantly, it looks a lot better than the ship on their website. I'm not saying that I paint so well. Just that the photos for the Tau ships on the GW site simply don't do them justice.

Overall, the Merchant Class Tau ship is very reminiscent of the Starcraft Battlecrusier. Or rather, I should say that it's the other way around.

Cheap Little Props Mean Everything

You know, the thing about space is...there's nothing in it.

Staging space battles on a piece of black felt is all fine and good, but 99% of the time there is nothing else on the table but the ships, because space is, well, empty. So, I found a very cheap, quick, and easy way to spice up my space battles. Just print out some pictures of planets and put them on the mat.

Here's an Earth-sized planet. To scale!

Just one or two makes all the difference. And the fun part is - the math works out!

Fun with the Maths

A Void Unit in Rogue Trader is an abstract measurement. However, they suggested as a rule of thumb to call the average VU around 10,000 km. With some quick Google-fu, we can see that the Earth is just a little over about 40,000 km. So on your battlemat, 4 inches, 4 squares, or 4 hexes can be the diameter of any planet cutout you put down. And that planet will be approximately the size of earth. Easy as pie.

Now, you have the bragging rights of not only having cool props, but you have the geek satisfaction that your props are to scale.

With a little more Google-fu, we can see that the moon is, when closest, about 350,000 km way. Or 35 inches on my battlemat. So, when I placed the moon in the battle 35 inches away from the main planet, I could still revel in the coolness that the battle was to scale.

Perhaps the coolest thing about all of this is that you really get a sense of how fast these ships can move. If a Rogue Trader crew knows what they are doing, they can cross the distance between the Earth and the Moon within an hour's time. That's over 350,000 km (217,479 mi.) an hour! And remember that they are moving ships with enormous mass.

Here, we see the battle with the Tau as it began. The Tau were in orbit around an Earth-sized planet, while the far moon was about as far away as our Moon is to us. And the cut-outs were to scale. Kind of neat to see it in scale before you.

How did I get that when a fast ship moves only 8? Remember that the ship's Void Master and Explorator can both boost a ship's speed significantly. We've seen PCs more than double a ship's movement with good rolls. It makes a tremendous difference.

As the battle joins, the fast Tau ship was able to cross the difference swiftly. Kitsune's ship hid behind the berth of the ringed moon while the Ferral Wolf gave chase to the Fel Hand.

Fourteenth Session - The Tau Arrive

2010-11-18T08:00:00.000-08:00

Investigating the system of Lucin's Breath

After winning the bidding war of being able to investigate Lucin's Breath, the crew traveled out to that system and jumped out of warp in the shadow of one of the large moons of the system. There, to the Explorer's surprise, they discovered that the vast majority of the system's ships had been destroyed by the Tau. And indeed, there were still a dozen Tau ships in the system surveying it.

Hadarak Fel's betrayal

Of course, no good scouting mission is as good as one with a side order of betrayal. As the Explorers were taking scans of the area, Hadarak Fel (who had been running silent) powered up his own vessel and took a few pot-shots at the Ferral Wolf. And then proceeded to flee.

The nearby Tau vessel immediately turned and sped towards the coordinates of the disturbance. The Explorers pursued Hadarak Fel's ship - The Fel Hand - and fired upon her. By sheer blind luck, the crew landed a critical upon the Fel Hand and disabled her warp engines, preventing her from leaving the system.

But just as the crew of the Ferral Wolf threw up their arms in celebration, Fel responded with his lance batteries, cutting their hull integrity by half and damaging one of their macrocannons. Then, a second ship belonging to Fel appeared on their scopes, hiding until an opportune moment to attack them from the rear. Meanwhile, the Nihontu, Lady Kitsune's ship, engaged the Tau and began taking fire from a far off distance.

As the Tau closed in and sent out their own bombers, the Explorers engaged in evasive maneuvers and plotted in the solution for a short Warp jump to the edge of the system. They safely made it along with the Nihontu, although Lady Kitsune's ship took heavy damage from the Tau bombers in the process.

The Plot Thickens

At the edge of the solar system, the crew waited for what they were sure to be an impressive light show as Hadarak Fel's ships were destroyed. However, it was not to be. Strangely, Fel's two ships were largely ignored by the Tau, leading the Explorers to suspect that their new nemesis might be in league with the xenos.

From the relative safety of the far reaches of the system, the crew did some deep scans and discovered that five remaining small ships were hiding out at the edge of the system as well. These last few surviving vessels were in a defensive formation, protecting just two ships that were Warp drive incapable.

After some negotiation, it was decided that one of the disabled ships was to be evacuated while the other stayed behind. Essentially, that final ship refused to evacuate. What followed next was an interest moral dilemma. Should the Ferral Wolf attempt to recover the evacuated ship while it remained unmanned? The rescued crew was coming aboard with the expectation of being able to get their abandoned ship back. But in the wilds of space, where no law exists in any event - could the Holocene dynasty claim that ship as their own? Could the dynasty coerce the rescued crew to join the dynasty? And even if they could do these things - would it be right?

Another Battle?

But before such moral quandaries could be explored, the crew discovered something alarming. The ship's Navigator was able to detect a small fleet awaiting them in the Warp itself, just outside of Wake.

After delivering a warning to the governess at Wake, the Ferral Wolf dropped out of Warp, soon followed after by 10 ships from the Null Fleet. A climactic space battle then erupted, with Wake's planetary defenses, the Ferral Wolf, the Nihontu, and their rescued vessels battling with the 10 chaos ships. Then, with a rousing speech, the Rogue Trader rallied the numerous unaligned vessels in the Wake system to their side. With the combined efforts of all of these forces, the chaos vessels were sent running. Four of the ten invading ships were destroyed.

And with that, the Explorers won an historic victory against the Null Fleet.

From the Journal of H. Tiberius Holocene

2010-11-11T08:00:00.000-08:00

Matt, our Rogue Trader player was kind enough to contribute to the blog once more. This time with words from the dynasty's former Rogue Trader....

This letter, penned by my uncle, was given to me three days before his death at the hands of Ork raiders. I still wonder if he knew or sensed something, a preternatural awareness of his impending death that caused him to officially, albeit secretly, hand over the Holocene Warrant of Trade before his demise. The original copy of this letter, hand written on parchment instead of coded into a dataslate, rests with the Warrant. I transposed it here for… well, for rather obvious reasons.

Tiberius,

Let me begin with pride. The man you have become certainly instills within me that emotion. My sister, your mother too would be proud, were she here to see you. As much as my arrogance would enjoy taking credit for your upbringing, I must admit that you certainly are your own man. This is good in our kind; you will be often required to make difficult decisions, and while advice and wisdom will help, in the end never forget that you are the imperator of this dynasty, which brings me to the reason for this letter.

Our once great house has fallen nearly into oblivion. It is up to you to ensure its survival. In some ways I envy you; you will begin the greatest adventure that any in our dynasty has ever attempted, save perhaps Hester Nathaniel himself. At the same time, even for the same reason, you will also face the greatest challenges.

I will not tell you to be careful or safe. I pray you understand the weight, the importance of your position; not just as a Rogue Trader or as the Archon of House Holocene, but as the terminal hope that keeps our name from extinction. That, however, does not mean to always be cautious. You will be required, at times, to make bold decisions. I place my trust in your judgment in this.

I offer only three things to leave you with, wisdom I have gleaned from just over two centuries as a Rogue Trader. First, consider thoroughly the man you wish to become. This dynasty will follow in your footsteps. If you are a brigand, a traitor to your word, so will this House be named. Infamy is easier to achieve, it always has been; but do not mistake it for greatness. The name Holocene has long been synonymous with honor, will you continue that tradition? It will be easy, especially in this time of unrest, for you to turn toward unscrupulous behavior. I hope, for the sake of both your soul and our dynasty, that you will not succumb to this temptation.

My second piece of advice is this: question every decision you make. Allow for doubt and listen to the advice of those whom you trust. Analyze possible outcomes and understand that your decisions affect the lives of thousands today, and perhaps the lives of untold billions as time progresses. However, once a decision is made, let it be made. There are things that cannot be undone once done. Sometimes we simply must live with the consequences of our actions. Greatness is not the same as perfection. Learn to live with the mistakes you will make.

Finally, I leave you with our secrets. As a house descended from Inquisitor Holocene himself – I would warn you that our Dynasty and the very ship that you inherit possesses many. I will not enumerate them here, as words transcribed can be read by others. No, what I have to tell you is for your ears alone. And we will speak true when the time comes.

I know you have the potential for leading the Holocene name back to the glory it once held. When all else fails, remember that I willingly placed this dynasty, along with my trust, in your hands. You have always had about the mark of terrible purpose. The Holocene Name needs such a man at this hour of twilight.

Swift and True shall she venture, so long as your heart is pure.

With greatest affection,

Admiral Lucant Holocene

Thirteenth Session - The Taming of the Pirates

2010-11-08T05:59:00.000-08:00

Within the Warp...astronomic geography can take on strange and terrible proportions.

How do you incorporate a pirate crew into your Rogue Trader dynasty?

This is the question that the Explorers were faced with in this session. After all, it's not like these people are disciplined, well-trained soldiers. Their pirates. They have no discipline. They have only fear. They have no courage. They have only greed. They have no honor. They have only hate.

Trouble with the Fleet

On approach to Wake, we rolled for the NPC Navigator's trip through the Warp and came up with a Warp Storm. While the PC Navigator has skills high enough that he can easily pilot through the most terrible of Warp anomalies. However, the NPC pilots of the other ships....

Here is where the idea of a PC entourage is useful. At this point in the campaign, if it were just the PC ship flying around, the Void Master's skills are so high that he almost need not roll in certain situations. However, since the Explorer's are now in charge of a fleet of ships, how everyone else does becomes equally important.

In short - they lost a ship. The warp storm caught the pirate raider, the Red Glaive. After an entire series of terrible rolls, I ruled that the Red Glaive was going down. Pirate Captain Tor, in an effort to save half of his fleet, saved the Glaive but at the expense of his own vessel. In a split second, the frigate Talon was gone. 30,000 crewmen were lost.

That was truly a profound moment for me. In what other game do tens of thousands of people's lives hang in the balance like that?

Finally Arriving at Wake

The crew finally arrived at Wake, where Governess Ophelia Winterscale requested an immediate audience. At the governor's palace, the crew met with Governess Winterscale and there encountered two other Rogue Traders - Lady Yuriko Kitsune and Hadarak Fel. People really versed with the Rogue Trader universe will certainly recognize the name Hadarak Fel. And Lady Kitsune is just Lady Sun Lee from Lure of the Expanse, renamed.

It turns out that Governess Winterscale's astropaths had recently lost contact with the system of Lucin's Breath. Being an extremely important system, she wanted to hire out a Rogue Trader to go scout out the system and bring back a report. After a short bidding encounter, the Explorer's won out and were given the task of scouting Lucin's Breath, accompanied by Lady Kitsune. Hadarak Fel was understandably affronted by being left out of the mission and promise of profits and left in a huff.

While the crew were preparing to make an expedition to Lucin's Breath, they met with the pirates again. The crew of the Rogue Trader dynasty were extremely unhappy about joining with pirates. Particularly with pirates who had once captured and enslaved some of their senior officers.

Pirate Captain Tor, then, offered a compromise. As Rogue Traders, the PCs had the ability to bestow upon him a letter of marque, declaring an alliance with the pirates, but keeping the pirates at arm's length. The pirates would not be part of the dynasty in this case.

Fight!

During the negotiations, there were, of course, dissenting pirates who wanted nothing to do with the Rogue Trader dynasty. They chose that moment to stage a mutiny. And in the words of a certain knight, they chose...poorly.

The Void Master's fractal power sword literally caused one of the mutinous pirates to explode in a shower of gore, blinding some of the nearby combatants. The Explorator broke open the head of another pirate with a bolter shot. According to the lovely crit tables, this gentleman suffered the ignominy of getting his head exploded and his body set alight. The still-headless body ran forwards before hitting the corner of the room and falling over.

Now bonded in the rite of mutual combat, the pirates took on the letter of marque, placating the crew and yet still increasing the strength of the dynasty.

More later.

Interlude - Outpost: Wake

2010-10-25T12:36:00.000-07:00

Wake is a series of planets in the Winterscale's Realm sub-sector, named after its spectacular planetary architecture. Legend has it that the planets within this system were transformed with a mega-invasive crystalline growth from a cosmic anomaly known as the Ravager. Hence, the system's name - Wake - for it is said to live in the "Wake of the Ravager". (Bonus points to anyone who knows the reference I made here.)

A view of Wake and its largest planet - Sirocco ; many of its moons bear the mark of the Ravager

Importance:
Wake has an importance second only to Footfall in the Koronus Expanse. Its importance is due primarily to the fact that it forms a gateway into Winterscale's Realm, the most settled, colonized, and frequented sub-sector within the Expanse. The most travelled and well-known warp routes all pass through Wake. It is a strategic place to stop off for supplies as one travels further into the Expanse.

Wake's unusual crystalline structures also provide the system with a vast wealth of minerals. Everything from water, to silicon, to quartz, to galluim can be found here in abundance. The Wake system is constantly being mined for its resources by countless mining vessels and exploratory ships. The thousand thousand mining claims made all over the system are cause for numerous battles and fights over territory in this outpost on the frontier.

Astronomics:

Wake's sun is called Mercurial, due to its flickering and erratic luminescence, particularly notable at a distance. It is an approximately the same size and age of Sol, the Terran sun. However, one would never know by looking at it. The star is surrounded by a thick mass of crystals which distorts the star's light, constantly refracting it. Now and then, solar flares from Mercurial will set the cloud of crystal fragments alight, causing dramatic light shows across its surface and throughout the Wake system. This thick cloud of crystals is constantly replenished by the planets that rotate around Mercurial.

The each of Wake's planets feature massive crystals, most of which are size of continents. These crystals jut out of the system's planets constantly shed shards and fragments. Many of these crystal spines have their own atmospheres. Some even have their own ecosystems and weather patterns. As each planet rotates, it continually flings fragments of these crystals into space. Some are as small as grains of sand, others as large as cities. As the system continues to age, it is predicted that eventually the planets of Wake will resume their spherical shape, casting off the excess crystals over the course of aeons.

Politics:

The political seat of Wake is Spire - a large spaceport and community located at one of the tips of the smaller crystalline spines of Wake's largest planet - Sirocco. Spire is a built on top of a crystal spine of obsidian, one of Spire's larger exports.

The outskirts of Spire - the city itself sits at the tip of an obsidian crystal.

Spire itself is a city crafted primarily from the obsidian around it. Most of the city's architecture was constructed to mimic the surrounding landscape. This unusual construction makes it a darkly glittering city with buildings made from hollowed out obsidian spines mixed in with buildings made to look like obsidian spires. Dancing all over them are thousands of holographic advertisements and messages. As a frontier city, Spire is a city where anything and everything is bought and traded.

The Governor's Palace on Spire

Notable is Spire's high population of cultists. These pilgrims have come mainly from the Calixis Sector seeking refuge from religious persecution. All of these cults are Cults to the Emperor as Chaos cults and the like are not tolerated. However, here in the far reaches of the Koronus Expanse, a cult to the Emperor which does not share the precise teachings of the Ecclesiarchy need not draw the raised eyebrows of the public or worse...the examinations of an Inquisitor.

Above Spire is its all-important outport, a vast array of small space stations which provide a place to dock for the hundreds of ships which come to Spire on a daily basis. Repairs and maintenance is performed at the outport, far above the frontier mega-city.

The political head of Spire is Governess Ophelia Winterscale, cousin to Calligos Winterscale. As the political head of one of the most important ports in all of the Koronus Expanse, Ophelia Winterscale wields tremendous political power. Ophelia is known for her unassuming and informal manner. She does not tend to dress or speak the part of a noble and even prefers to conduct meetings in Low Gothic if allowed.

One of Wake's four planets - Cyclops - with its moons

Session 12.5 - Epic Moments in Role-Playing

2010-10-24T21:00:00.000-07:00

Build to the Awesome

When last I left off on the blog, Rob's Astropath, Zachariah was seething with rage against the pirates who were now accompanying the Rogue Trader fleet.

Here were the very people who enslaved him and also caused him to lose his arm. So what does he do? He has a meeting with the Rogue Trader of the fleet explaining his desire to vet the pirate captain of the other fleet. After all, can a pirate captain be trustworthy?

However, in a complete breach of protocol, the Astropath marches up to the bridge of the Ferral Wolf and hails the captain himself, summoning Pirate Captain Tor to his own personal chambers.

This highly irregular breach of procedure and protocol caused the captain to give pause. But he relented all the same. Tor then left his ship and docked inside of the Ferral Wolf, bringing his entourage along with him.

What then happened was a series of tense, show-down type moments, as the security team of the Ferral Wolf scrambled to receive this very unexpected guest. (Remember, the Astropath didn't give the Explorers any warning. He just said, "Get your ass over here!")

The pirate captain arrived and was escorted by the Explorers' own armed guards up to the Astropath's chambers. Just before entering the chambers, however, Tor turned to the Seneschal, who was present. He just basically laid it all out there and said, "So...what is this about exactly?"

Now, all the while, the pirate captain had set up a secret vox transmitter on his person and had it sending blips over to his ship. If vox transmission stopped for some reason (due to the captain's heart stopping, or simply a loss of signal), then the pirate ship was poised to ram the Explorers' ship as well as open fire.

Bringing the Awesome

For me, this was an epic moment for the campaign and one of the things I wanted to get out of Rogue Trader. Here was the ship's Astropath, bent on revenge, seething with anger. Here was the pirate captain, wanting to do right by his crew and ship. Because this was so momentous, I paused for a moment and really shone a spotlight on the event.

Think about it. You have two frigates lined up beside each other. Each one manned by close to 30,000 people. And all it would take for these two massive ships and populations to start firing on one other is for the wrong person to panic at the wrong time or for the PC Astropath to want too much vengeance.

I described in that moment what it would take for two such ships to go to war. In that moment, dozens upon dozens of fighter craft were powering up their engines and arming their missiles. Massive macro-cannon batteries were plotting firing solutions. Enginseers were preparing to fire up void shields, boost power to the sub-light engines, and divert power from non-essential systems. Basically, 60,000 people were all on edge, all preparing to go to war, all because one person needed his pound of flesh. But that is the world of Warhammer 40k. War in the grim darkness of the 41st century is often fought for far less.

Ultimately, the Astropath did not melt the pirate captain's brain, but he did essentially torture him. And that's because Tor never had anything directly to do with his enslavement. Or his loss of the arm. However, he still was made to see the Astropath's long-suffering aboard the pirate vessel and all of the other torments that he received.

After that long moment, Tor and the Astropath actually came to an understanding. Which was sort of epic in and of itself.

The crew then proceeded to make their way to Winterscale's Realm. Where destiny awaited them.

Twelfth Session - Escape and Torment

2010-10-17T13:52:00.000-07:00

So this session precipitated, for me, an epic moment in roleplaying. A single moment that encapsulates with Rogue Trader is all about. That epic moment deserves its own post and will be discussed at greater length there.

The session started off with the group recovering from their escape from Footfall. The Explorers took stock of their crew and ships as well as the small pirate fleet accompanying them. It turns out that the pirate fleet is now accompanying them out of Footfall as a direct result of player actions.

The battle pskyer of the group puppeted the pirate captain into accompanying them out of Footfall. This action led to the captain's death, but it gave the Rogue Trader Dynasty a chance to prove to the pirates that they were the better way to go. After all, it was the pirates' own second-in-command who ultimately killed the captain. As the Rogue Trader said, "Hey, if you join us, we won't kill you."

So now...the Explorers have pirate allies. The same pirates, by the way, who press ganged three of the player characters. Interesting. And not what I would have expected at all.

This session was spent mostly dealing with that the subsequent fallout. Mainly, the crew in the PCs' fleet was unhappy about having pirates tag along with them. Not only that, but the two pirate vessels were roughly the equivalent of the Rogue Trader's fleet. A frigate and raider against a frigate and raider.But also, these pirates were the same pirates that had once captured and enslaved three of their senior staff.

All of these meant that the session started off with tension. The crew's morale was low. The pirates and Rogue Traders were trying to feel each other out. And then, into the mix steps the Explorer's new Astropath.

Rob's Astropath was not just a former slave of the pirates - he had taken mortal wounds and been brought back from the brink of death. As a result from the battle of Footfall, he lost an arm. (Rob's player had to burn a permanent point of Fate to keep from dying.) Now, the Astropath awoke and seethed with rage. The pirates...they had done this to him. They had caused him this pain and entrapped him all those years aboard their ship. Now, he was going to have his vengeance.

There's Always Room for More Figgity Bits!

2010-10-13T14:15:00.000-07:00

Long ago, I learned that players love manipulatives. Cards, hand-outs, etc. One can go over-board, of course. No one wants to read your 50+ page of fake world history for your home-brew world. (Okay, there are some people like that. But few.)

However, just a little card or token can be a pretty neat thing to hand over to a player. That's why I came up with this:

It's a large card that I gave a colored border to and filled with text, describing an innovation that the Explorator recently came up with. It's a sort of "ion grenade" which makes technology go amuck by messing with the machine spirits. I guess I could have just emailed him this info or wrote it down in my notebook, but what I'm learning in this campaign is that that stuff often gets lost. You forget about it. We've all been there, right? Ten sessions later, the GM or the player perks up and says, "Hey! Remember my thingamajigger?" This helps as a sort of reminder. A placeholder that says: "Hey there, I have this now."

What's interesting is that in the campaign, out in the depths of space, the Explorator can do these sorts of things. In a Dark Heresy or Deathwatch game, innovating or inventing would be strictly prohibited. That said, I suppose that a tech-priest could always "rediscover" old technology.

So here's what he came up with:

Gear Shriek

Class: Thrown; Range: SBx3; Damage: Special; Pen: 0; Special: Blast (2)
Upon detonating near a technological device, roll 1d10

Roll

1 grenade fails, no effect

2-3 machine spirits confused - device is unreliable/operates erratically

4-5 machine spirits panicked - device operates continuously on current settings for 5-10 rounds

6-7 machine spirits frightened - device very difficult to use or control, -20 to -40 on rolls

8 machine spirits scared - device locks and will not activate for 5-10 rounds - this is the *intended* result

9 machine spirits maddened – device continuously one and rate/speed of operation increases and at the end of operation, the device is damaged or destroyed; machine spirit may be permanently affected (GM's discretion)

10 spectacular/bizarre event, GM's discretion

Eleventh Session - The Domino Effect

2010-10-10T13:18:00.000-07:00

One of the most fun aspects of a game is when it takes on a life of its own for me. The point or points in which I have completely let go of the reins and am only reacting to what the players do is pretty much the high point of any campaign that I run.

While that has certainly happened many times in this current campaign, it certainly started a large chain of events in the Eleventh Session.

Quick recap - The Explorers were at a ritual Foretelling, conducted by the Witch of Footfall. In the middle of it, Footfall is attacked by a Chaos fleet.

The session was planned as a series of large set-pieces.

Set-piece 1 was a fire-fight with some pirates, who were using the chaos of the moment to hopefully reap vengeance on some of the Explorers.
Set-piece 2 was a scramble across suspension bridges to a shuttle craft so they they could escape, all the while being fired upon by a flyer.
Set-piece 3 was a space-battle as the PCs tried to escape Footfall.

Background:

In our current game, three of our player characters are interconnected. The Explorator, Void Master and new Astropath all chose Press Ganged as their Trail and Travail. All three of them chose to have been prisoners aboard the same pirate ship. While on board, all three of them staged a mass riot and escape, breaking free from their servitude and linking all three of them. However, I noted that this didn't really provoke much roleplay when the session were actually under way. And that's because while this past was written into their backstory, they didn't really experience it.

So, I threw them a softball and see where they went with it. A had the very same pirate crew that captured them show up at Footfall. During a sudden attack on Footfall, the pirate crew made their way towards the party, hoping to settle some old scores.

That's when the PCs stepped in. The Explorers' battle-psyker took control of the pirate captain's mind because the pirate captain happen to be at the Fortelling alone (a requirement for attendance). With no one else to note what was going on, the pirate captain started marching around with the Explorers and barking sudden commandments to his fleet.

However, the rules for mind control in Rogue Trader being what they are, this was no charm person or dominate person spell. You can only control someone's body like a puppet (making it look unnatural) or issue them short commands. All of which made the pirate crew was suspicious. Making them extra-aggressive.

How it went:

Set-piece 1

Of course, who do the pirates fire on? Not the battle-psyker, but the ship's new Astropath, who they bore a grudge against anyway. Obviously, he was the one who was controlling their captain's mind, right? After being fired upon by a melta-gun, the ships new Astropath's arm was mostly melted, due to Wound damage. Not good.

The Explorers tried holding the pirate captain hostage to get the pirates to back off. But pirates being who they are...the first mate fired upon his own captain and killed him. At that point, the Rogue Trader did something extraordinary. He called out to the pirates and said, "If you join me, I won't shoot you."

While that didn't convince the pirates immediately, it did put the seed into their mind. It was the serious ass-whooping that they received from the Rogue Traders in the midst of mass chaos and confusion that pushed them over the edge. Also, the Rogue Trader made a hell of a charm check.

The end result was that the Explorers

Set-Piece 2

Who ever said that Rogue Trader characters were too powerful and couldn't be challenged? As the Explorers made their way to the shuttle craft, they had to cross over a number of suspension bridges, all linked to various pieces of debris floating in space. That's what Footfall is, after all, just a collection of space debris that's been built upon.

While they were scrambling over the bridges, a flyer dove in on them and attacked. I used the stats of the Aquila Lander from Into the Storm. It's definitely not the worst flyer in the game or even close to it. But it put down the Astropath. Yep. He had to permanently burn a Fate Point to keep his character in the game. Now, he sports a cyber-arm for his troubles. And that's just the beginning! Kudos to Rob for taking this severe injury so well.

So, here's the thing to remember - the Astropath's arm was melted mainly because the battle-psyker took control of the opposing pirate captain. The results of this would see serious repercussions in later sessions.

The flyer was even actually able injure the Arch-Militant. However, after firing their newly acquired melta-gun at the flyer and some firestorm action from the battle-psyker, they were able to finish it off.

After the Explorers finally got on their shuttle, they were able to fly back to their own ship under heavy fire and make their way out of Footfall. A distraction was set up by their tentative allies, the Naraghast. A small fleet of Imperium ships, led by their staunch ally Admiral Balter provided more cover.

Set-Piece 3

Next, we staged the battle, minis and all. The party's objective? Maneuver their vessel across the battlemap safety, while battling and dodging the enemy Chaos ships.

On the Rogue Trader's side was their two ships (a frigate and raider) and three pirate vessels (a light cruiser, frigate, and raider). Up against them was a chaos cruiser and three frigates. Now, I will say that I certainly had not planned for the PCs to have so many ships (four) on their side. The reason they got help was as a direct result of the Rogue Trader's coercion of the pirates.

Having a space battle with so many ships was certainly daunting. Particularly when the rules lean heavily towards the campaign being about one vessel. In the end, what I did was to assign each allied vessel to a player and have them make the appropriate rolls. The players were also able to make their regular character rolls to boost their own ship, since all of the PCs stayed aboard the main Rogue Trader vessel.

As I've said on some of the comments here, what makes combat in space difficult is the fact that all vessels involved have to move. So, each turn, you're having to adjust the entire field of combat. That said, I still like the combat very much. I just need a bit more practice with it. And, to be fair, the space combat system was clearly never intended to have a large field of battle with numerous ships on it.

The result of the battle was fairly spectacular. The allied fleet concentrated fire upon the cruiser and destroyed it with appropriately spectacular results. As it was destroyed, I joked that whenever a ship bites the dust in Rogue Trader, there's always that chance that the Warp Field generator is disrupted and the destroyed ship creates a warp storm. Heh. Careful what you joke about.

Then, they scrambled past the exploding vessel and veered around space debris. In a turn of events worthy of Star Wars, a raider pursuing the allied fleet rammed into the space debris, destroying it in the process.

Just as they thought they were all clear, the pirate's light cruiser was fired upon by the Chaos fleet at was destroyed before it made it clear. The result of the pirate cruiser's destruction was a warp storm, which threatened to suck in the remaining pirate fleet. It did not, but it did suck up one more chaos vessel, demonstrating how deadly Rogue Trader space combat can be.

And now we pause yet again for some of the Awesome.

2010-10-08T08:00:00.000-07:00

Many thanks to my buddy Duck Sauce for bringing this to my attention. Once I beheld it, it was so awesome that it needed its own post. That is all.

Wizard's new ad for D&D:

And now here's where it's from - a short from the 2006 D&D movie competition:

Prepping for a Game

2010-10-06T12:43:00.000-07:00

I have found over the past 8 months, with the addition of a new child, my prep style for games has radically changed.

The thing I used to do was put in a massive amount of prep work up front. I'd build the world, create NPCs, build plot lines, and have everything in near-publishable format before we took off. I'd even create stat blocks and tab monster entries. Then, after the game got started, I let the world take care of itself. Because I had put so much time and effort into the NPCs and the world, I created whenever the PCs did something, it was very easy to figure out how my world and cast of characters would react. My session prep, then, was to just take a few notes about what the various factions of my world would do.

Now, it's much different. Now, I literally can't put in the intensive prep work up front. So it has to be spread out over the course of the campaign. Plus, there is a lot of re-reading the rules and refining my knowledge of how the game works.

In my past two campaigns, I had about a week or two to put something together resembling a campaign. What I came up was a very rough, very bare skeleton for a campaign. Basically a very broad and open-ended outline. On that outline were what I thought the major events of the campaign would probably be (subject to change, of course), and most importantly, the major themes of the campaign. Then, I start filling in the world and campaign outline in-between games. It's very different for me but I'm getting used to it.

Something new for this game...I now extensively email my players about their characters' agendas and what they want to get done. This sort of happened on its own. The Rogue Trader player, Matt, started emailing me with orders he was giving to their entourage. I would respond back and then we would see his orders carried out during the course of the next session.

However, now that emailing habit has started to spread to the other players. I find it to be tremendously helpful in maintaining interest and momentum for the campaign. When I've tried to do this before, it's usually failed. People are busy with their own lives, etc. I'm not sure why this campaign has provoked this much outside-game buzz. But there you go.

Something I've always done is to write notes on what they did last session and consider how it will affect the game world. Then, I bullet point a few things that I definitely want to happen in the next session, usually as a direct result of what they did previously. But I allow room for them to change.

One more thing, and this is big: I am constantly prepping certain big scenes or big reveals in my head. Cutscenes and set pieces, if you will, that will come up later in the game. I even have them set to music. I don't know when they will come up, but when the PCs do something that I think warrants the big reveal, then I'll whip it out, perhaps tweaking it for their specific actions.

What about you all? How do you prep for a game session? I'm curious to hear.

The View from Dragon Con

2010-09-17T10:00:00.000-07:00

So it's been a while since my last post - but this one took a while to get out. There were just too many people to thank, talk about, and hotlink.

So anyways, I went to Dragon*Con this year, marking my 17th visit to the largest sci-fi convention in the South.

A Sister of Battle and a High Priest! Long live the Emperor!

And what makes this year so special? Well, I got shanghaied into being the game programming director at Dragon*Con. That means I was in charge of game panels. Things like Dungeon Design 101, How to Make a Better Character - things like that.

This year, we were able to get some fairly esteemed guests to our game panels. For our two indie games panels, we got Fred Hicks, who is responsible for creating Spirit of the Century and the recently and highly successful Dresden Files game.

Fred was at Dragon*Con just to hang out with Jim Butcher, the author of the Dresden Files books. Turns out these two were old friends that go way back. And not only that Jim Butcher's agent happened to be a gamer-geek, so she got him to put forth his material in RPG form.

Also, appearing in our panels was Jason Bulmahn, the lead designer for the Pathfinder RPG. Jason, too, arrived at Dragon*Con by way of vacation and was kind enough to sit in some panels for us as well.

Finally, we had Eloy LaSanta, who, while not as giant a personality as Bulmahn or Hicks, is living the dream that all gamers have - he has his own gaming company and is actually in the black. He's putting out his own games, game systems, and game worlds and getting returns. And he has one Hell of a combat system, I must say.

But we didn't just draw people from the pen and paper side of things. We also had Michael Capps, who is the CEO of Epic Games. Epic produces the Unreal engine, which is used for most of the console games you see nowadays for anything from the recent Transformers game to Batman: Arkham Asylum. But Epic is best known for producing both of the Gears of War games.

Mike literally hopped off of a plane coming from San Francisco where he shared the stage with Steve Jobs touting his latest upcoming game - Project Sword - to be on a panel with me. That, my friends, is the definition of graciousness. To come from a big, thousand plus sized hall and rush to be in a room with just 100 people for my lil' old panel...well that's just class right there.

Here's the presentation that Mike was at just before he joined me at Dragon*Con.

Coming with Mike was Alexander Macris and Julianne Capps. They were, respectively, the CEO of Themis Media and former Editor-in-Chief of the Escapist Magazine. Not ringing any bells? Well, Themis runs the award-winning Escapist Magazine site. Still not ringing any bells? The Escapist hosts Yahtzee - the famed "No Punctuation Critic". If you haven't seen or heard of Yahtzee, well you just lost some geek cred. No worries, though. Check out his reviews of video games. They're friggin' hilarious. How that guy maintains his level of comedy year after year is beyond me.

Alexander, it turns out, is a huge D&D nerd so we kibitzed about that quite a bit. It all led up to Mike, Alexander, Julianne playing in a game of 3:16 Carnage Across the Stars. We were joined by Alexander's VP Newton Grant and some long time friends of mine, Doug and Melanie.

And, you know, I have to really give credit to the Minions of the Monster Master for being able to introduce this cool group of people to 3:16. We all had a blast while playing it and even after the con, these folks were still emailing me about the game.

Other games played were Weird War II, using the Savage Worlds system. In a nutshell, think Castle Wolfenstein. Put Nazis, zombies, and Cthulhu into the same soup and you have yourself a game. Again, anyone from the Minions podcast would be familiar with this setting, since my pre-generated characters for the scenario were from a campaign we all played together.

Finally, I also got to play Zombie Cinema, which was introduced to me by the Minions. That was very interesting because what should have been an hour to hour-and-a-half game turned into a four hour deep-roleplay experience. If you haven't checked out Zombie Cinema, it's one of my favorite RPGs of all time. It has no GM. No character sheets. No stats. And yet can often yield very powerful role-play experiences.

But despite all of this gaming goodness, the highlight of the weekend had to be me getting to see Stan Lee. Back in the day, Stan Lee could come to Dragon*Con and you could walk up and just say hi. While he was always popular since the launch of the Marvel movie franchises he's a little more in demand. He nearly filled a 1600 seat hall with people wanting to see him. The wait in line for Stan was nearly two hours long. But it was worth it, because we were just three rows back from the front and could see everything quite well.

And, of course, you cannot leave Dragon*Con without a one-on-one celebrity moment. My celeb moment this year was getting to hang out with Brent Spiner for about five minutes. I was fortunately enough to catch him at a good time when the line to see him was light. I paid my money for an autograph and chatted with him about Star Trek and his random cameo on the new show, Leverage.

Of course, I would be completely remiss if I didn't mention my Dragon*Con friends that I saw as well - people that I get to see about once a year at Dragon*Con. Many of my friends are now staffers of the convention like myself, but I'm happy to have seen Dave, Joe, Beau, Shaun (both of them), Rebekah and her new significant other, Rob. Perhaps my only regret this Dragon*Con is that I didn't see more of them.

Two of my players were there - Nick and Doug. The guy who plays the battle-pskyer and the seneschal, respectively. Nick was brave enough to attempt to indoctrinate his fiancee into the convention scene. A complete and total geek-virgin, Jen bravely wandered about the convention taking everything in. To understand how uninitiated Jen is...she didn't even know what Lord of the Rings was until Nick introduced it to her. (I am exaggerating...but only a little.)

One more time, I have to give out major props to the Minions of the Monster Master. While I was at the convention, I met lots of hardcore gamers and game designers. But I was more well versed in the wide variety of RPG games out on the market than most folks that I knew. Most everyone I talked to had no idea about 3:16, Zombie Cinema, With Great Power, or Dogs of the Vineyard. And I have to really give credit to Duck Sauce and the gang for continually exposing me to new games and new experiences all of the time.

Anyhow, that's all for now.

And Now We Pause for some the...how do you say? Battlefleet Gothic

2010-09-10T07:42:00.000-07:00

So, a while back one of my buddies got back from Saudi Arabia and we were able to get involved in a game of Battlefleet Gothic. Like a lot of the other defunct Games Workshop games, it's pretty awesome. The game works well on its own and has not suffered from the bloat of numerous rules upgrades and modifications. So it's easy to jump into.

The game is a tight little skirmish game, which employs about seven to five minis to a side. Not at all a big investment for a Games Workshop game. The ships controls and combat are not unlike the controls in Rogue Trader. Ships in motion must move forwards a minimum distance before engaging in a turn. Moving faster than normal or turning sharper than normal requires a special order. Each ship can only receive one special order per turn.

Just like in most Games Workshop games, the combat turn is divided into phases - a movement phase, firing phase, and ordinance phase. Attacks are rolled on a chart, which is modified by range, and the target's ships position relative to yours. Again, like most GW games, the combat is all resolved on the same chart, making it easy to look up and resolve.

Probably the most fun thing about the combat for me was the impact clouds. When a ship is hit, blast tokens are placed on the table at the point of impact. Flying through a blast token causes a ship to move slower and possibly take damage. So, as the battle continues, the battlefield quickly fills up with blast tokens, which function as a sort of terrain. The randomized, shifting-and-moving terrain made the game chaotic and fun. It really helped capture the sense of a massive space battle.

So how did the game go? I'll let the pictures do the talking.

Here's my fleet. Three chaos battlecruisers and four escorts (frigate class).

My opponent's fleet. Imperial cruisers! The two smaller ships are frigates.

To give you an idea of scope in the 40k universe...yes, the small ships are escorts, which is sort of like a Raider in Rogue Trader RPG. The next smallest class are the frigates, which are sort of the default vessel of Rogue Trader. I think it's mind-blowing that most of the massive and grand ships of the Rogue Trader game are just 1 hit fodder in this skirmish-level game.

Here are some more shots, just because they look good and the pictures turned out well.

I love the look of the Chaos cruisers the best. So many spines. So very Ridley Scott.

The heavily armoured prow of an imperial cruiser. What would end up being my downfall.

More spines!

Right. So onto the important stuff. How did I fare? Not well, I'm afraid. Not to say that I didn't have a blast, because I did. But in the end I literally had my arse handed to me. Basically, my opponent did a good job at spreading himself out and getting me to spread out my attacks so that I could not concentrate fire enough to take out many of his ships at all. All of his vessels took some hits, but only one or two took enough to become disabled.

But if it says anything about the game, I thoroughly enjoyed it, despite the fact that I lost so badly.

Since forward movement and momentum are inherent, its quite easy for two ships to sail on past each other, firing salvos at each other the entire time. Very naval. Very cinematic. And very different from what I'm used to in a minis game.

Here you can see the real thick of it. Ships right on top of each other. Blast tokens creating that spontaneous terrain that I'm talking about. If Chaos is going to go out, what better way to go out?

Well that's all for now. Next time, I'll give the low-down on Dragon*Con.

Tenth Session - Prophecy and Fortelling

2010-09-08T07:52:00.000-07:00

After a successful raid of the Space Hulk, our intrepid Explorers then made the rest of the journey to Footfall. There, they picked up their new Astropath, who happened to be a new player.

Rob, our new guy, gravitated towards the Astropath career after learning that the crew had lost their first one. Interesting, considering that the first Astropath was just an NPC. I'm sure there were other factors in his decision-making, but there you have it.

After disembarking on Footfall, the crew was met by a large platoon of Kroot mercenaries, who offered their services. The Kroot come fresh out of Into the Storm, and I was happy to incorporate them into the campaign. The Arch-Militant got fitted for some new power armor and then it was time to get more plot-heavy.

The Explorers were invited to a Fortelling - a great prophecy that bends the future itself. This particular Fortelling was put out by the Witch of Footfall. Actually, there are seven witches in Footfall, but in my campaign there's only the one. One can win a seat at the Fortelling but you have to bid at an auction to do so.

(If any of this seems familiar, the whole scenario comes straight out of Lure of the Expanse, which what I'm currently mining for ideas. )

In any event, the auction isn't one for money but instead for...something curious. Like the toenail of a daemon, ten-thousand blind servants from hive world of Necromunda, or the last sonnet composed by long-dead Sister of Battle. In an unexpected turn of events, the Explorers bid the Senechal's missing memories which he's been wanting to get back for over a decade, now. Yet another reason I'm loving the game and the setting - you can actually do things like that with real consequences. Now, the Senechal will never get to see his hidden backstory. He will never get to know what was taken from his mind.

The crew was able to be present at the Fortelling, though, when all was said and done.

A great presence awakens

But the prophets shall arrive

With their White Light before them

The claw, taloned - shall stir

And lo, near the four suns, a treasure emerges from a Dead World

A great prize to be claimed by those who fear neither Fate or Destiny

And she shall be the key to the awakening

Its slumber

She shall be its key.

All will be revealed with the coming of the Great War

Then, in the middle of the Fortelling, Footfall was attacked, by the mysterious and infamous Null Fleet, a group of bad guys I used for my last campaign. In the next session, we'll have our climactic finish was the Explorers say farewell to a dear friend.

Character Journal 3 - H. Tiberius Holocene

2010-08-26T08:41:00.000-07:00

Day 267, 813M41
Log of Events
Ferral Wolf, comissioned 389M34
Captain H. Tiberius Odysean Holocene

Warrant of Trade # RV-426-G7-96-BFN4Y2
Granted to Rogue Trader Hester Nathaniel Holocene 623M35 327M31
Given leave to spread the light of the God Emperor to places unknown within Segmentum Obscurus.

How do you measure the value of a life?

It is a question that every leader worth his salt must face, even Rogue Traders. I have sent men to their deaths, lost soldiers in battle. I have even left people to die and made decisions that cost the lives of thousands of souls. I tell myself that the sacrifices are necessary; sealing off a burning compartment on my ship might kill hundreds, but save everyone else, tens of thousands of people who rely on me to make the right decision. I have commanded warriors to stand and fight in futility or to advance straight into corruption. But I will never be able to forget the screams of those burning alive, or the sight of men being ripped to pieces at the hands of an Ork horde. Despite these memories, I have always been able to remind myself why I do these things.

How can I let the fate of one life, or even a thousand lives stand in the way of destiny?

I am the progenitor of the Holocene Dynasty. Sending men to their deaths is a part of that. The decisions I make will someday influence entire star systems, billions of people. I will not fail my ancestors, I will not allow our line to fall into oblivion.

And yet...

Losing Sitara was a hammer blow. Though I rarely had opportunity to express them, I cannot deny the feelings I had for her. Love is probably too strong a word, but there was caring and compassion to be sure. She smiled only rarely, but when she did, it brightened my day. Watching her get ripped to shreds by the... thing under the city was devastating.

Suddenly my understanding of my destiny was cast into shadow. If her fate meant so much to me, what of the fates of all the rest who serve under my command, who toil for the name Holocene. How can one man be held responsible for so many? How can I continue to choose to send men into battle, or one of a hundred other gruesome ends?

I wish, for a fleeting moment, that I were someone else; a lowly serf. Riches and fame seem ill-equipped to offset this price, this burden I must bear.

I find myself unsure as to my next course of action. This is unnerving to say the least. I know that I am still tasked with leading this crew, this dynasty. What if I make the wrong choice?

ALL STOP - Into the Storm - a review

2010-08-11T13:23:00.001-07:00

A buddy of mine, who happens to be a player in my Rouge Trader game went to Gen Con this week and picked up Into the Storm. So, here's my review of the new book, after having it for only three days.

If you don't know what Into the Storm is, it's an upgrade book or "player's guide" for the Rogue Trader game. So far, this book seems to me to be what The Inquisitor's Handbook was to Dark Heresy. And that is certainly a good thing.

Chapter One: Advanced Origins

One of the more innovative things I enjoy about the Rogue Trader system is its Origin Path system for character creation. It's a real help because it helps focus character backgrounds and creation in a massive universe of options and realities.

Chapter One greatly expands upon the Origin Path system and keeps it backwards compatible by introducing alternate origins at each station. For example, instead of starting out on a Death World, you can start out on a Death World or a Frontier World, which gives different benefits and penalties. Moving down from that, you could pick Scavenger or Fringe Survivor, etc. And on top of that, each of the new origin picks has three different variations to choose from as well. If you choose to be a Fringe Survivor, you could be a Survivalist, Heretek, or Pit-Fighter. (Warhammer Quest anyone?)

All of these new Origin paths do cost xp, however. So people looking to go crazy and power-mad are reined in a bit. I'm going to certainly offer these new Origin Paths retroactively to my players, because many of them are much better fits for their characters.

Another row of Origins is added as well: Lineage. Lineage is an Origin aspect which describes your family and their reputation.

Another cool edition - an Origin path for the Explorer's Warrant of Trade. This is very neat. In this section, the players and GM sit down together and decide the general history and background of the very Warrant they hold. Doing so determines the group's starting Profit Factor and Ship Points.

Chapter Two: Koronus Careers

This section of the book contains information the both expands on the initial Rogue Trader classes and introduces new elements to the game. I will tell you right now that this is the section that introduces the Kroot and Ork Freebooter races to the game. Unfortunately, neither race is given its own Origin chart, and they are stuck with a single career choice - Kroot Mercenary or Ork Freebooter. They do, however, have a slew of Talents and other abilities that set them off from humans. The Kroot, for example, can gain hit points by eating their slain opponents.

Thereafter, the book describes Alternate Career ranks. Just like in Dark Heresy, alternate career ranks are special ranks which can be taken instead of the next level on the line. After your alternate rank, you go back to the ranks in your regular career. Some of the alternate ranks are more specific than others. For example, the Acquisitionist can be only taken by the Seneschal. Some are very setting specific, like the Drusian Adherent. However, many of the alternate career ranks are open - able to be taken by any of the career paths.

The end of the chapter features a few Elite Advances. Two of them are are open to most careers, while some like the Rite of Duplessence and the Sanctioned Xenos are career specific.

Chapter Three: Extended Armoury

This chapter features, as you might expect, a lot more weapons and equipment. I didn't know how much they could expand the weapons list from the Inquisitor's Handbook, but they did it. Noteworthy are the expanded types of grenades and ammunition; as well as a fair number of xenos equipment.

Chapter Four: Starships Expanded

This section offers a brief write up on ship life and then goes into expanding the ship options in Rogue Trader. More hull types are present. Many should seem familiar to fans of Battlefleet Gothic, like the Firestorm frigate or the Lathe-class monitor cruiser. Also added are ship background packages. You can buy these with ship points, and are like backgrounds you can pick for your ship, rather than roll for.

There are also ship upgrades like better Warp engines, additional Void shields, or different ship weapons like missile batteries. Finally, there are interesting ship upgrades like giving your vessel vaulted ceilings (morale increase) or even buying an atomic weapon. But you can only buy one nuke at a time.

Chapter Five: Vehicles

This is perhaps the most valuable portion of the book, since it gives stats and rules for vehicles, something missing from both Dark Heresy and Death Watch. There is an old web book out there with vehicles and vehicle rules for Dark Heresy, but those rules were much more on the narrative side and sort of filler for a gap in the rules.

The vehicle rules are not unlike the rules for ships, though obviously they work on different scale. Each vehicle has a degree of armor and structural integrity. When it starts taking Structural Integrity damage, it starts taking critical wounds, much like a character.

Chapter Six: Expanded Psychic Powers

This section includes new Navigator powers as well as new Astropathic powers. None of the powers that I saw in my quick glance seemed to be redundant, as can happen in systems of this nature. There is also a new psychic school, which is Theosophamy - a school which focuses on manipulating the Warp itself for its own sake. The powers included allow the psyker to do such things as attempt to banish daemons and the like (it's not easy), or make one's weapon into a Warp Weapon.

Chapter Seven: Enhanced Game Mechanics

Chapter Seven is almost an appendix, with a number of rules upgrades or mechanics ideas in place for GMs to use or not. There is a small section on Social Interaction challenges, not unlike an Exploration challenge.

The book also introduces Meta and Background Endeavours. Meta Endeavours are large, campaign-spanning Endeavours which are meant to be either an outline for your campaign or something close to it. I rather liked this write up. It shows how Endeavours can be used to outline an entire campaign, even if you run it sandbox style.

The addition of Background Endeavours is nice as well. It allows the PCs to set up long-term tedious tasks to be accomplished by NPCs so that the party can go do exciting stuff.

This chapter also introduces ideas to make Acquisition Tests and Profit Factor more interesting. For example, if the Rouge Trader group keeps on spending extravagant amounts of money, they can attract unwanted attention.

Finally, there is an expansive look at then different roles on a Rogue Trader ship, what they do, and where they operate. I also enjoyed this section, because ship-board drama is something I wanted to cover in my campaign, and this section is great for ideas for just that.

Chapter Eight: Port Wander

Obviously, this is a detailed write up on Port Wander. Footfall, of course, is covered in Lure of the Expanse.

Ninth Session - SPACE HULK

2010-08-05T08:52:00.000-07:00

Well, after a number of disastrous rolls by the Navigator of our Explorer's crew, I had a choice to make. I could put them waaaay off course and roll on the table to determine what ill befell them. Or, I could use one of the three pre-scripted "events" that I had developed for just such an occasion before the campaign started.

Hmm. Which did I pick? It's not hard to guess.

The Space Hulk

The Explorers' ship was set far off course by the turbulent warp, but in its meanderings, their two vessels ran across something quite interesting - a Space Hulk. As most people here know, a Space Hulk is a piece of cosmic mass, fused together with the hulls of numerous ships that were lost in the Warp at one point and time. The Space Hulk the crew found was exceptionally large, containing the carcasses of numerous battleships, cruisers, and frigates - not all of them human.

Essentially, I used the adventure found in the Purge the Unclean adventure compilation as the basis for the encounter. Obviously, what I did and used was highly modified. However, the players still had the opportunity to pick up both the Luminous Reproach (an ancient Inquisitorial power sword) and the Liber Daemonica (a powerful text of forbidden lore).

The Black Ship

The basis of the Purge the Unclean adventure is that within a Space Hulk the Inquisition discovers the lost transponder signal of a famous Inquisitor's ship. And this Inquisitor was famed to have owned a very powerful daemon's bane weapon. Instead of telling the party that up front, however, I allowed them to sort of "discover" this as they went in.

The party had to deal with strange sightings. Things moving out of the corner of their eyes, and shadows that seemed to have a life of their own. This all culminated in the party winding up in an Inquisitorial Black Ship. It was only after a few rolls that the party slowly started to piece together where they were. A few additional rolls allowed the RT to realize that they were on the Dark Victory, a vessel for a famous Inquisitor who possessed a powerful sword - the Luminous Reproach. While the ship's name changed, many of the other details came from Purge the Unclean.

The Fight

Fortunately, the crew was smart enough to bring a platoon of armed men with them. Their platoon was half made up of their highly-trained honour guard and the other half was made up of guards from the crew of the Lucien's Folly - the ship whose crew they recused from destruction. Otherwise, fighting over 50 psykers might have been daunting. Even for a powerful Rogue Trader crew.

The way I staged it was with my familiar microcosm/macrocosm houseruling. A few statted out psykers represented the main threat, fought against by the PCs. Around these main threats, I placed some simple pente stones to represent the mob of pskyers all around them. I explained that the pente stones were only there to be a visual representation. They were not really "there" in terms of fighting, choosing targets, etc. The PCs' men were represented with dice in a similar fashion.

Before the battle could be finished, two Dark Eldar arrived with their warp beasts in tow. The battle became a three-way conflict.

In the end, Ergan Wright was injured. The crew had the rest of his men escort him back to the Ferral Wolf. To see how successful they were in their escort, I had the party make a series of rolls, not unlike an Exploration test. They fell short of the mark so I had them choose. Did the rest of the guard from the Lucien's Folly perish? Or would it be their precious honour guard? The crew chose to sacrifice their honour guard...which means, now, they their well-trained guardsmen are unfortunately gone for good.

Temptations and Weirdness

Not wanting to leave completely empty handed, the Explorers decided to look for the famous Luminous Reproach. After much searching, the Explorers encountered a number of weird events, like time-looping ghosts and corridors which seemed to appear and disappear.

One of these events was an opportunity to reclaim the Liber Daemonica. However, the party decided not to. If you remember, the Rogue Trader's rash actions had already resulted in the loss of their Astropath. He didn't want to be quite as reckless a second time around.

This is was pretty cool from a roleplaying standpoint for me. A character actually learning from his mistakes. Mistakes made while in character.

Real Consequences for Hard Things

What I really liked about this session was the fact that the characters attempted something difficult (raiding a space hulk), got something special for it (a very powerful daemon-bane sword), but paid a real price for it.

Typically, in a D&D situation, the party might go on a quest and enter a dungeon. The dungeon may be even really hard if the quest is big enough. But what usually happens is that the party survives (perhaps barely) and they get their reward. Thereafter, they are healed of all wounds. Even of some of them die...they can always be brought back. Usually there is very little long term effect from a difficult dungeon.

Here, however, we have a completely different situation. The loss of the honour guard means that the Arch-Militant lost good men. Men he hand picked and hand trained, which also reduces the stats of any of their personal guard as well. But out of this great loss comes a very interesting story - of how the remaining guard of the Lucien's Folly became the new honour guard of the Rogue Trader dynasty.

How cool is that? The honour guard in the Rogue Trader game aren't just some nameless shmoes who signed up for the job, but were chosen for an in-game reason and as a result of an in-game narrative.

Very cool indeed.

Music in My Games

2010-07-31T08:00:00.000-07:00

I use a lot of music in my games. In my opinion, not only does it add to the experience, but it helps ground me into the scene. It reminds me what is going on and what I'm going for in any given scene.

For every campaign I run, I try to craft a particular "soundtrack" for it. Meaning, I'll assemble a collection of albums and songs from my larger library that fits the campaign and setting. If you're interested in doing this kind of thing, you really don't need a massive library of music. When I first got started, I only had about 3 or 4 albums that I used all of the time.

If you've never used music before, the best way to get into using music with your games is to put it on in the background. So here's a list of music that might work for you as simple background stuff for your games:

For Combat

If you just want some exciting music for your games - to play while combat is running, for instance - I can't recommend the Epic Score group enough. Basically these are albums filled with epic-sounding music that you can just put on in the background during a fight and never have to worry about what track you're on. Also, I'd recommend the Savage Tongue by Ars Arcana for the same reason. As an interesting aside, if you listen carefully, you'll note that you've probably heard a lot of Epic Action stuff from movie trailers, commercials, or TV shows.

Also, Epic Action does a lot of work with tense and thrilling music as well. I don't have any of that material, however, so I cannot comment on that.

Follow the links above, and you'll find some great samples of their music.

For Mystery

Mystery, creepiness, and the unknown are strong themes in the 40k universe. After all, there's always the Warp and the constant threat of it.

For my games in Rogue Trader, I've been using a lot of the creepy tracks from Mel Gibson's version of Hamlet. However, that album is out of distribution.

So, if you're interested in picking up some generally creepy and mysterious music, I'll recommend Midnight Syndicate, and the Riven soundtrack. Midnight Syndicate is full of creepy music and sound effects. You can just put it and and let it ride without much worry. The one problem with it, however, is that its mostly gothic horror, which may not mesh well with a space opera.

The Riven soundtrack, however, fits very well with Rogue Trader. And it's readily available anywhere.

For Downtime

It may seem odd, but some of the most used music I have is what I call "downtime music" - music for when the party is just sitting around chatting. It's used quite often, because quite a good amount of time is spent having the Explorers interact with one another. For this, I would highly recommend the score for the HBO series - The Tudors. While the music is meant to be evocative of Renaissance Europe, it fits Rogue Trader because the 40k universe is one with archaic trappings.

Also, there are a number of great music tracks on the Mass Effect 1 and 2 soundtracks. While these tracks are much more evocative of a futuristic and sci-fi setting, you cannot just put in a Mass Effect music album and hit play. Only some of the tracks will end up working for you, so be ready to make a playlist of the tracks you want.

Character Profile: Rook

2010-07-29T08:00:00.000-07:00

Here's a entry given to me by Nick for his character - straight out of the blue! Nick obviously plays our resident pskyer, using the Dark Heresy rules for his character, rather than the Rogue Trader rules. It's been interesting, to say the least, to see how they balance out and/or stack up.

Without further ado, here is Rook, in his own words.

+ + + + Decrypting………..Decryption complete + + + +

Classification: Personal Log
Author: Rook
Location: New Holocene Colony, Planet Vedic, Koronus Expanse
Date: 5622815.M41

For reasons I shall explain, my memory of my past is still incomplete. Perhaps my spelling it out on this data slate will help me to recall more.

As near as I am able to determine, I am between forty and fifty standard Terran years of age. I was born aboard a transport ship, (likely while it traveled the warp) to parents I have no recollection of. I survived a childhood on my own in the massive hive city on Firos Prime. Luckily for me, my telepathic talents developed at a very early age. Whenever I was desperate enough, I found I could read the minds of those around me, and even control them to a degree. Upon reaching puberty, I developed pyrokinetic powers as well. I became a Wyrd – an untrained, outlaw psyker, and my talents helped me to survive.

I joined an underhive gang. The Imperium’s laws regarding the sanctioning of psykers meant little to most of the underhive, and my powers gave us an edge. They called me the Rookie. The name stuck even once I became one of the senior members of the gang. Through the gang that became my family, I thrived. Perhaps we did too well. Due in no small part to my now fully developed powers, we expanded greatly and came to control the majority of the underhive. Our influence began to encroach upon the industry of the city above. Eventually, the Arbites took notice, and chose to intervene. They stormed the underhive in force, with an entire infantry regiment of Mordian Iron Guard to support them. They slaughtered us, killing everyone even remotely involved in our affairs. I alone was spared, as psychic fodder for the Black Ships.

Years must have passed before I finally reached Holy Terra. It is a period I prefer not to reflect upon. The Scholastica Psykana found me to be untainted by the warp, but I suppose they did not like my attitude. I can’t imagine why. They blocked most of my memories and implanted fabricated ones more suitable to their needs. I still don’t know what else they did to me in that time, or why every square centimeter of my skin is covered in scars.

I became a sanctioned psyker, and a fanatical devotee of the Holy Inquisition. I spent another two decades in service to the Ordo Hereticus. During that time I committed untold atrocities against citizens of the Imperium, all in the name of rooting out the heretics that hide among them. With my ability to read minds as easily as most read the words on a page, I was an extremely useful tool to the Inquisition. However, over time, my mental conditioning began to erode. After all, I was a telepath, and even the Scholastica Psykana is not infallible. When I finally broke through the blocks on my true identity, my faith in the Emperor and his Holy Inquisition was shattered.

I fled as far as I could go. If I am lucky, the Ordo Hereticus thinks I am dead. Now I find myself out beyond the edge of the Imperium of Man, in service to a planetary explorer named Ishi, and through her, the Holocene Dynasty. My best chance lies in remaining with this Rogue Trader’s crew, though it seems like it will be only a matter of time until he gets us all killed – or gets the rest of us killed, I should say. My memory is still a mess, but whatever happens, I will never go back. I will never again allow myself to be used to harm innocents in the Emperor’s name.

+ + + + End Transmission + + + +

Eighth Session - Drama Amidst the Crew

2010-07-26T07:18:00.000-07:00

This session began one of the things that I was most excited about in Rogue Trader, the dealing with the operation of a large number of crew members. Mainly because it's like the drama of ruling a kingdom...only you're in space.

The session started out with two crew members who had become infected by the Warp and whose conditioned had worsened dramatically. Way back at the second session, two crew members became infected by the Warp. A chance encounter caused by a failed roll by the Navigator. However, the Explorers ignored this little incident so I had it come back to haunt them.

Now, months after the incident was reported, bleeding runes appeared on the crewmen's skin and they were now crawling up the walls and across the ceiling. The Rogue Trader and the rest of the Explorers gathered in the ship's sick bay to discuss what to do about the incident. Unfortunately, the crew members who had any knowledge about the Warp were involved with other duties (their players were not present).

Faced with no other option, the command crew resolved to put the infected men out of the air lock. They assembled a number of armed guards to do so. As the two men were facing their long walk to the airlock, Sitara, the Explorer's former Astropath appeared before them, pronouncing a number of cryptic messages.

The Rogue Trader, playing true to form, cried out and actually broke out a bit in front of the men. Fortunately, the Arch-Militant was able to keep the guard in line and they were eventually able to get the two poor Warp-tainted souls out into the vacuum of space.

The Fallout

What followed then was the real meat of the session - dealing with the rest of the crew. By this time, of course, the general crew populace were becoming panicked with the news of warp-tainted crewmen. And once news of their fate started circling, wild speculation began to spread. How many people on board were warp-tainted as well? Who would be shoved out of the air lock next?

Thanks to the quick thinking of the Explorer's Seneschal, the rumors were quickly quelled and the men who saw the Rogue Trader in his moment of weakness were made to keep silent. Because not all of the rolls the Seneschal made were perfect, I ruled that instead of the whole entire crew thinking that they were Warp-tainted, it was mainly the crew of the Lucien's Folly who believed that they were somehow cursed.

This, too, was abated by the Seneschal, who was able to rally the former crew of the Lucien's Folly with a heroic speech about his own trials and travails and the sacrifice of the former Rogue Trade who led their small fleet.

What I really liked about this session while the game was mainly about the crew dynamics, it was as serious as any other life-and-death RPG session. Here was the crew of their fleet, starting to panic, starting to loose morale. It raised those great questions in a Rogue Trader game - how do you keep tens of thousands of souls together through space, the Warp, and other planets? How do you keep the whole thing from falling apart?

Thereafter, the Seneschal began to receive visions from the deceased Astropath - vision about the rest of the lost Rogue Trader fleet...and it's possible location near the Undred-Undred Teeth. But before they could do anything about these visions, the Rogue Trader ship came across something very unique...a Space Hulk. But that's for next time!

Life Aboard a Ship

2010-07-22T12:46:00.000-07:00

As I've mentioned before, I take a lot of inspiration from the Gaunt's Ghosts series of books. Part of the fun of the books is that it basically deals with the everyday drama of military life in the Imperial Guard.

So, basically, I took a lot of inspiration from that. I thought about how the various crew members and crew factions were interacting, and how each would respond to their mission differently. Then, I let the PCs deal with the ensuing drama.

One major thing I stole from the Ghosts series is the section of the ship I call "The Follies". The Follies are basically the underbelly of the ship. A place where civilians, hangers-on, and unlisted members of the ship live. It's a tiny little meta-community which allows the rest of the ship to actually function. If you're looking for a red-light district, its in the Follies. Get pregnant while on board and need child care? In the Follies. Looking to gamble? Swap holo-vids? Get black market items? Or even just buy a drink? In the Follies. The Ghosts series refers to that section of a ship the swelter decks or low decks.

Basically, it's where the crewmen go to unwind or just "be themselves" when not on duty. In any case, I liked this idea so much I incorporated it into my game. But I also like it because it's very much a 40k sort of thing to have in a setting. It reinforces the idea of massive ships that sail through the stars for years, and being entire communities unto themselves.

It's a great place for adventure. A Rogue Trader ship could even have its own little underhive! It also allows a Game Master and players to have some "traditional" roleplay. For example, you could stage an encounter at a tavern in the swelter decks or start out a scene with a minstrel playing for an audience. It helps ground the party into something familiar before you go out and do something totally alien and unique.

And Now...Some Ships!

2010-07-17T07:23:00.000-07:00

Rouge Trader has given me a good excuse to get some new minis. Ships in particular. Here's a shot of the Explorer's ship and their new acquisition, the Angevin's Blade. A fellow player is a stickler for having the right mini for the job, so here we have both a frigate and a raider.

I splurged a little and got a Rogue Trader cruiser for a good price on EBay. So here that is.

Here's a detail shot. I love how the back of the ship is like a miniature city with a huge dome and spires around it.

Note the size of our Rogue Trader frigate compared to the cruiser! The cruiser is easily four times the size. And the frigate holds 30,000 people in it already. It's already a floating city and a cruiser is four times the size...I just can't get over that. The broadside cannons alone are the size of modern buildings.

And here's a general shot of some of the other frigates I have painted up as well.

Painting the Minis

Probably the best thing I can say about the ships are that they are extremely easy to paint. I based all of them in black and dry brushed them their primary color. The Battlefleet Gothic ships have such texture that they're very easy to dry brush. And because you're not doing a mini of people, you aren't plagued by the small vital details that need to be right - like faces, eyes, and hands.

The biggest drawback is storage. I don't know how I'm going to store these little guys!

All for now.

Using the Micro/Macrocosm Divide in Roleplaying

2010-07-11T21:49:00.001-07:00

Had a great session of Rogue Trader tonight!

As we played through it, I think I had a revelation on how I want to do a lot the game's broader actions (and perhaps a better insight of how to run a Skill Challenges in 4E).

As I've been listening to the Minions of the Monster Master, I've really been taken with the game With Great Power, which has the players and game master sort of determine the success or failure of any character before roleplay. Basically, you "script" what you want to do first, find out if you are successful or not, and then actually sit down and roleplay the result of your actions. If you fail your test, then you get to determine how you failed, etc.

The point is - roleplay is continuous and unbroken once it starts. I think that I might start incorporating some of this into my Rogue Trader game.

The Dilemma: Spicing Up Broad Actions and Skill Challenges

One thing that Rogue Trader encourages you to do is to truncate broad or time-intensive actions with a series of dice rolls. For example, an Exploration test, which is used to find something during an Exploration Challenge, is a series of dice rolls which accumulate degrees of success. A lot more fun than the old fashioned hex-by-hex exploration of a map in the original D&D.

Now, understand that I like this sort of mechanic. I like it because it's a lot better than the old days of making a check and then seeing if you made it or not.

However, there is this sense of reducing a lot of cool roleplaying into just a series of dry die rolls. Many of my sit-down plays of 4E skill tests have resulted in this kind of experience. The GM describes what he's looking for, the players justify how their skill might help, and a process, which might have resulted in neat roleplay is reduced to just dry dice rolls.

However, in this latest session, I think I've found out how I want to handle situations like a 4E skill test or some of the broad dice rolling mechanics we've been using. And that's this - going all the way back to our first session - handling the dice first and then narrating afterwards.

The Seed is Planted

The solution for this situation sort of evolved organically. As I will report in the next game write-up, the crew's Seneschal had an issue with crew morale. A few crew members were highly disturbed at some supernatural events they had witnessed aboard their ship. Now the Seneschal wanted to quiet them up before wild rumor and superstition spread throughout the ship.

I had the Seneschal explain to me what he wanted to do. I had him make a series of rolls based on what he was trying to accomplish and how he wanted to accomplish it. Essentially, the Seneschal attempted to make the crewmen know that spreading wild rumors and fear throughout the crew would be dealt harshly, but keeping things quiet would result in valuable reward. And if any of the crew blabbed about what they witnessed, all of them would suffer the same fate. We made a few rolls to see if he could accomplish this broad action and we determined that he could.

However, after he made a long series of rolls determining this, we sat down at roleplayed the culmination of his efforts. I staged a scene where the Seneschal interrogated and grilled one of the crew members who had witnessed the supernatural event. He got to describe the scene and the room that the interview took place in. I described the guardsman he was speaking to and his reactions. What was neat about this is that we didn't pause all that often for dice rolls because the result of the scene had already been determined. Thus, both the player and I could build towards that final, expected end.

When Things Really Went Right

Later that night, we really refined this when the Seneschal dealt with another morale issue. Some time ago, the Rogue Trader crew had rescued some Free Traders from certain death. These newcomers were not mingling well with the rest of the Rogue Trade crew.

First, the Seneschal and I talked about the situation openly and what was going on. Then, he explained to me in general terms what he wanted to do to try to solve the problem. He made a series of rolls and we determined that he was successful.

Thereafter, we roleplayed through a scene where the Seneschal spoke to the crew. But what was neat about this, was that we knew what the end outcome was to the situation. So as he would lead the scene in a particular direction, I could follow him with my own NPC reactions.

The best part? A long, continuous scene of roleplaying with no dice rolling to interrupt the situation. Certainly not something I would want to do for every roleplaying situation, but I think I might just have to keep using this technique in my games.

The Process

Again, stealing from With Great Power and 4E, the way this system would work is this:

Scripting: Determine with the player generally what they want to do and how they are going to do it. Talk it out.

Rolling: Make a series of rolls and determine how successful they are.

Roleplay it: Now that you know how a given scene is supposed to play out, roleplay it out with the players, allowing the scene to be led in particular direction.

And Now for Something Completely Different

2010-07-07T13:07:00.000-07:00

Behold! I bring you the finished model for the arch-militant of the group: Karacus.

Background:

Karacus comes from an unlikely background for an arch-militant. Born and raised on Dynasty Holocene's homeworld of Norn, Karacus grew up as a laborer and servant, someone on one of the lower rungs of society's ladder.

However, during a party one night, one of the younger Holocene children ran into an altercation with some bullies of nobel descent. Harsh words were exchanged. The exchange turned into a challenge. And soon, young Severus Holocene was facing five, well-armed and well-trained noblechildren of the powerful House Dexen. Unable to defend himself against the five much larger teens, Karacus stepped in and defended the young Severus. Almost a giant even as a teenager, Karacus was able to fend off the well-trained assailants.

Severus's father took note of Karacus's deeds and somewhat adopted the boy, watching him grow up as a servant in the Holocene palace. When Karacus was old enough, Severus's father used his considerable influence to place Karacus in a military academy, where he excelled. And no one ever bullied him.

When the Holocene homeworld was overrun by orks ten years ago, Karacus and Severus stayed behind with the last evacuation ship to defend the last grain of their home soil. They both watched as the orks finally completed their invasion and again later when the Adeptus Astartes came in to wipe the planet clean.

Bereft of a homeworld and much of its fleet, Karacus and Severus formed their own mercenary company and spent the next decade of their lives building a formidable mercenary army. It is there that they met Kai Etchdar and Mallum Bar, the void master of the ship.

Model Design:

As I stated before, the giant power fist that the model is wielding comes from a super-ape that Reaper makes. I simply sawed off the figure's hand and put the over-sized gauntlet on its wrist. The power pack is simply the hammer end from an extra Durgen Madhammer fig that I have.

At the last minute, I put on some of Durgen's grenades on the back of the figure, just to make it look even more decked out with weapons and such. Ironically, the real Karacus doesn't use ranged weapons all that often, but by the time I realized this, I had already modded the figure. Oh well - I think I can still encourage the arch-militant's player the ranged weapons are fairly necessary.

Overall, the model came out great and I couldn't be more pleased. Especially with my first serious mod-job. Thanks to everyone for the encouragement and advice!

Seventh Session - Unexpected Guests Pt. 2

2010-07-02T20:56:00.000-07:00

After spending a long time getting to know the Scylla, the crew returned to their ship. There, they learned from their NPC Navigator that their ship's original purpose was to house a terrible daemonhost and expel the creature to the furthest reaches of the known galaxy at the time. Their ship, the Ferral Wolf, was given one Inquisitor Holocene to accomplish this task.

Piecing together different parts of the puzzle, the crew discovered that Inquisitor Holocene traveled to Vedic long before the Koronus Expanse was officially discovered and deposited the daemonhost there. The Scylla arrived when they attempted to tamper with the coffin housing the daemonhost.

Interestingly enough, the players immediately picked up on the fact that the Scylla and the city they were protecting was even older than the daemonhost and their ship. So they must have been there when Inquistor Holocene first arrived on Vedic. The question remains - what were they doing there?

Thereafter the Explorers were able to trade some of their technology for information from the Scylla. After much discussion, the new Pskyer PC asked a clever question of their new visitors. "Where exactly are you from?"

Pointing to a large map of the galaxy, the crew uncovered a foreboding fact, the Scylla come from the same region of the galaxy as the Tau. And yet they were able to travel that distance to the planet of Vedic instantly.

I'll sum up the rest of what they found out in the session with a little encyclopediac file.

The Scylla

Origins: Human. The Scylla are a large empire of humans who originate from a time before the Emperor. They have no idea who or what the Emperor of Mankind is.

Technology: The Scylla seem to be more advanced than the Imperium in some ways, but far more primitive in other ways. For example, they seemed to have never seen any kind of holographic technology before. Instead, they rely on projection technology, which involve images projected onto blank surfaces with a series of lenses. However, they possess personal force fields, which can be combined to form stronger fields. Their ships are smaller and have less firepower. However, they have far greater numbers of ships. The Scylla's armaments rely heavily on force field technology and advanced melee weaponry, such as monoblades and fractal crystals.

Space Transportation: All ships piloted by the Scylla have the appearances of ancient barges, though each is made from a series of bronze-colored alloys. The Scylla do not use the Warp to travel but appear to somehow fold space. The folding of space is facilitated by members of their crew who hold what appear to be shepherd's crooks.

Society: Pskyers in the Scylla appear to be openly tolerated. Castes and societal rank with the Scylla appears to be even more regimented than it does in the Imperium. For example, slavery is openly practiced and embraced at a part of life.

Seventh Session - Unexpected Guests Pt. 1

2010-06-29T13:57:00.000-07:00

So last session ended with the characters causing their Astropath to be possessed by some force and then shredded into a fine mist. No sooner did that happen when the Dynasty's flag ship voxed down, in forming the Explorers that 25 ships of unknown origin had now arrived.

It turns down that the unexpected visitors were a race that calls themselves the Scylla. These 'creatures' appeared to have some sort of wing device on their backs and eagle-shaped helmets on their heads. Their armor resembled that of Ancient Terran history - it was built to resemble bronze breastplate and their carried centurion-like shields.

It was noticeable to everyone that the design and aesthetics of the master shuttle (which they discovered in the bowels of the ship), was similar to that of their mysterious visitors. With a few decent rolls, the Explorator of the group was able to get their archeotech communication equipment to contact the visitors.

The visitors soon removed their eagle-helmets and revealed themselves to be human. Not long after, the Explorers were able to ascertain that these very different-looking humans were a race of people that were lost before the time of the God-Emperor himself. Indeed, they did not even know who He was.

The Scylla wanted to ensure that the party was not trying to waken the sleeping entity they found in the large, coffin-like structure. After great assurances were made, the Scylla offered the PCs the planet - provided they would keep the sleeper subdued and issued a challenge to ensure they were powerful enough to be its guardian.

Next followed a very easy combat. Partly due to my really terrible rolls, and partly due to the fact that this was the first tactical combat they had with their new psyker (Nick's using the Dark Heresy rules for his psyker).

The psyker laid down at Firestorm right off of the bat, which annihilated the Scylla's combat leader and pretty much ended the fight. I thought it was a pretty fair trade, however, because as a result, the psyker rolled one of the worst things that he could have possibly rolled for Perils of the Warp. He almost got daemon-possessed. Which would have certainly ended his character.

The rest of the session was dedicated to an exchange of information and culture with the aloof and mysterious Scylla. Part of the fun of this session was the lack of ability to clearly communicate with the Scylla. I had the Scylla speak a highly mutated form of High Gothic, which had everyone leaning forwards, trying to figure out what was being said. There was a lot of hand-gesturing, and pointing at objects. It's one of those very neat encounters you can only have in a space-exploration game like Star Trek or Rogue Trader.

In any event, the crew were able to negotiate a meeting with the Scylla and discover a fair number of things about the planet and the massive relic which ended the life of the Explorer's Astropath.

I will save those details for next time, however.

Papa's Got a Brand New Bag

2010-06-21T13:43:00.000-07:00

So I got an iPad.

I got this neat little toy with the writing money that I got for a little assignment I did last year. Wasn't going to get one, but I had some cousins of mine who were falling all over themselves to get one. After some investigation, I got more and more intrigued by the idea and could see several uses for it. One of those uses that I envisioned was for, of course, gaming.

Several things I'm planning on using for.

First and foremost, the iPad should make me a better DJ. I use a lot of music in my games. Back in the day, I had a serious CD collection of movie scores and whatnot. I used these as background music for gaming, but they were also ideal for playing in the background when I wrote my games up. Anyhow, with the digital age, I transitioned into using an iPod. But when I use an iPod, I always feel like there's something missing.

The main problem I have with using an iPod is that it's often hard for me to select the right song for the occasion. Scrolling through long lists of songs makes it hard for me to spot the precise song. Even when I break up the songs into playlists. When I used CDs exclusively, I always knew the right album for the occasion, and could flip right to the right album to pick the right song. On an iPod, I often get lost in the song titles. However, the iPad allows me to browse songs within a playlist much more easily. For one, I can see my song list more easily. For another, if you look at this screen, you can see that I can browse through the albums much easier with their covers prominently displayed.

Another use for me will be, of course, the iPad's capacity as a reader. I prefer to read and browse physical books. However, when I referencing just a few rules or stats, the iPad will be ideal. When I go to a friend's house to game, I no longer need to carry an armload of books. Just one device. Now you might say that I could do the same thing with a laptop. But I hate browsing PDFs on a laptop. I've tried to do the laptop thing many times and it just doesn't work for me. Typically, my laptops are slow and find it difficult to navigate graphics-heavy PDFs, such as a file for an RPG.

Finally, I'm also looking forwards to the iPads ability as a presentation device. Now, if I want to show a picture of an NPC, setting, or something else, it will be a lot easier to just pick up the iPad from the table (with one hand, no less) and pan it around the room so everyone can see. I can even pass it around, or place the iPad in the middle of the table so that everyone around the whole table can see it. No angling the laptop this way and that way so people can see.

All of this is supposition and strategy, of course. We'll see how it really turns out when I go to full implementation.

Character Journal 3 - H. Tiberus Holocene

2010-06-17T11:00:00.000-07:00

Well, here's another edition of our Rogue Trader's journal! Please note that this entry is for our previous session, not the latest one.

Day 221, 813M41

Log of Events

Ferral Wolf, commissioned 389M34

Captain H. Tiberius Odysean Holocene

Warrant of Trade # RV-426-G7-96-BFN4Y2

Granted to Rogue Trader Hester Nathaniel Holocene 623M35.

Given leave to spread the light of the God Emperor to places unknown within Segmentum Obscurus.

Now I know why they use the word infested when it comes to Orks. The Angvein's Blade, the ghost ship I have claimed was more than teeming with them. Hellacious fighters born with a knowledge of warfare that staggers the mind. The fighting on board nearly broke the men. But in the end, the ship belonged to me. Every inch of the vessel was scoured in cleansing Prometheum, yet still I fear that we did not kill them all; there are still ghosts on that ship, of this I am certain; and I do not believe that all of them are human.

Locked away in her chambers, we managed to find the Navigator of that ship alive, if not unscathed from the encounter with the alien. Her name is Incabula, and while Malificent assures me that her abilities as a Navigator remain intact, I have ensured that Severus keep a close eye on her, lest her fears get the better of her, and my new prize. Speaking of, I have named Severus captain of the Angvein's Blade; though he is rather militaristic and overly formal in my opinion, I trust that he will keep the ship in good order, and I trust none more in case the Ork menace is not truly over. Besides, there is a part of me that wishes to keep my captains within the family, at least for now. Perhaps it is archaic, but as the Successor to the Holocene dynasty, I believe it is my prerogative.

Our return to Footfall was none less than I expected: a greeting of celebration and much pomp and circumstance. Of course I do not mind being heralded as a hero every now and again, it bolsters the ego, and it is good for my crew to see me so highly exalted, it reminds them that they are following a man of destiny. While on Footfall, I encounter Zephyr Ontiveros once again, who cautions me on "deal" which was made between my dynasty and that of the Naraghast. I am beginning to realize that the letter of the law and its spirit are two distinct things, and that understandings of a particular point can be skewed between different parties. As I said before, there is more to Chorda than meets the eye, and she is up to something, of that I am certain.

We also met Ishi, an astounding explorer of good repute, as well as her associate, Rook. She agreed to accompany us to Vedic, as long as she could formally join the Holocene dynasty. In honesty, this seemed to be almost too good a deal. She brings understanding and expertise that I would gladly have within my line, and am certain that whatever share of the profits she might earn will be trivial compared to the wonders she could unlock.

With our affairs in order, we set sail for Vedic. Along the way we passed by the Cauldron; it seems to have a presence both here in our Universe and in the Warp, and I am not entirely sure which is the image and which the reflection. On our journey, we received a distress call from an astropath. Evidently another ship had skirted too closely to the massive black hole, and was being slowly pulled in. Part of me was of a mind to leave them; it was, after all, either stupidity or fate which landed them in their situation, and I try to avoid interfering with either when possible. But as always I had a duty to my crew (which I was in need of more in any regard, now that I had two vessels), so we left the Angvein's Blade at anchor and traveled into the empyrean to effect what rescue we could.

After a brief deliberation, we hatch a plan to save as many lives as we can. The crew of the other ship loaded into shuttlecraft while the Ferral Wolf moved in close. We then overboosted our Gellar field, and the small craft ran the distance in a desperate attempt to flee the Lucien's Folly. In the end, we managed to save just over 8'000 souls. Unfortunately most of the command crew was dead or presumed so. Ergan Wright is the highest ranking member I could find, and is currently unofficially in charge of those troops. I decided to keep them all together, since I presume they will work better together than separate, and I do not wish to appear tyrannical. Still, if something major ever does go wrong, I fear they may revolt sooner than the rest of the crew. But I cannot let my mind fixate on suppositions and maybes, I must work with what I have.

While on the way to Vedic, two other things worth mentioning occurred. Firstly, I was appraised of an idea to build military training facilities on board the Ferral Wolf to better train our troops, especially in close quarters fighting. I do not feel that our men are anywhere near woefully inadequate, but the battle aboard the Angvein's Blade does have me looking into a number of ideas should we face Orks again. Second, Kai found something that still makes me smile when I think about it: a landing shuttle designed so long ago it makes the rest of the ship look new by comparison. I have no idea what wonders it holds, but I have ordered it pulled out of the storage bay it was in and put into active duty as my personal craft as soon as possible.

I wonder what treasures the planet Vedic will hold. There is a part of me that tries to imagine it, but already I have beheld things my imagination would never have fathomed. What more could a man want from the Universe than this? My wildest dreams are still less than the things I have seen. Every crisis I face is both a challenge and an opportunity, and I will overcome the former and seize the latter every chance I get.

Sixth Session, Pt. 2 - OH @#$!

2010-06-13T20:56:00.000-07:00

After the defeat of the Chaos vessel and its looting, the crew went about their business of exploring the planet.

The planet of Vedic is literally an untapped gem in the galaxy. It is a raw, untamed world with all of its natural resources intact. No hives or agri-farms exist on it. What's more, this planet is three times the size of a normal terran-standard world. Therefore, it can be assumed that the Rogue Trader dynasty have hit the jackpot as it were.

However....

On the north shore of the planet's only sea, the survey crew hired by the Rogue Trader dynasty discovered a city. Not just any city, but one that seemed to be perfectly intact. The trace readings on auspex revealed that this city was many millennia old, though it looked pristine.

Further investigation of the city by the Explorers revealed that the city itself was most likely a relic of untold value - a structure from the Dark Age of Technology itself. Viewed as a treasure by some and a horrid curse by others, the Explorer crew wisely kept this discovery from most of the crew.

Indeed, one of the most mysterious things about the city itself was that each part of it, even down to the smallest brick, was emitting some form of energy signature. As if the entire community was a massive power battery.

Upon investigating the rest of the city, they found numerous statues and bas relief displayed throughout. The pictures seemed to all tell the story of a bearded human who was the benevolent leader of their city. At some point, the pictures changed, however, depicting the placement of a coffin-like structure beneath the city. Each depiction of the coffin on the walls of the city bore an impassive mask at one end of the enclosure.

Excavation unveiled a titanic structure - coffin-like in form - beneath the main building of the city. Despite extensive analysis, the Explorers could not ascertain what was in the coffin itself. The Rogue Trader started to look for a way inside. One could not be found, even with careful scanning. The dynasty's NPC Astropath arrived requesting from the Explorers that she accompany them on their expedition, because she felt that there was something compelling about their new discovery. Something...personal. Basically, the coffin structure is tied up in the NPC Astropath's backstory.

The entourage members of the Rogue Trader ship began to tell the party that they were getting bad feelings about this all the way around. The Astropath herself said that she harbored ill feelings about the coffin and what may lay inside. All that could be told about the structure was that the coffin held some form of slumbering entity. Feeling rather brash and reckless, the Rogue Trader ordered the Astropath to make contact with the entity. Against her own recommendation, she did so.

In a rather dramatic scene, the Astropath was possessed by some force which uttered a message in some forgotten tongue. The only thing that could be made out was a name - C'tan. Then, the Astropath's possessed body spat out something High Gothic:

"Tell him that this vessel will not do. The key must be used." After which...the Astropath was shredded into a fine mist. Oh @#$! indeed.

The session ended with the bridge crew of the Ferral Wolf reporting that over two dozen ships were appearing on auspex, call dropping into Vedic orbit.

We ended the session there.

Comments on the Session

One thing I like about RPGs is that I'm often surprised at what happens during a session. I definitely did not plan on the party losing their primary Astropath. Losing their primary Astropath will mean that their ability to communicate outside of the solar system will be lost. Luckily she was only an NPC.

While the destruction of the Astropath was pretty harsh, I felt it was pretty appropriate. If you read any of the GW fluff or fiction, the work of Warhammer 40k is a harsh place. It's a place where, if you are not cautious, if you are reckless, the universe comes and bites you in the ass. The PCs were being reckless, but purposely so.

I've seen many players get reckless with their characters, believing that the GM won't kill their characters or that their PCs can take whatever is dished out to them, no matter what. This was not one of those cases. The Rogue Trader was really the one who was jumping with both feet into the fire, but he made it abundantly clear that he knew that he was being really ballsy. So he was a tremendous sport when he encountered the consequences that he did.

All in all, I have to really applaud the Rogue Trader PC. It's not often that a person will put themselves at serious risk because they're roleplaying.

I will also note here that this sort of shows the Entourage system in action. I was able to levy a consequence upon the party, but I didn't have to screw anyone's character over. At the same time, the incident was really jarring and we all really felt it. Heck, even I did. I had worked up a number of storylines and plot twists with that NPC Astropath!

Sixth Session, Pt. 1 - Battle for a New World (and Thoughts on Ship Combat)

2010-06-11T07:07:00.000-07:00

The Bare Facts

So last session left the Explorers in orbit over the planet Vedic, facing off with a Chaos ship.

Towards the end of the last session, the crew was able to do a cursory exploration of the planet and find the remains of an ancient, post-Emperor human society. This long-faded society had signs of being wiped out by orks. However, there were signs of the orks being wiped out themselves by some mysterious third party.

They were about to get into more exploration when their first officer hailed the Explorers and told them about another ship lurking on the other side of the planet. Returning to the Ferral Wolf, the crew soon learned that their visitor was none other than a Light Cruiser - controlled by Chaos forces.

What happened next was a pitched chase 'round the circumference of the planet Vedic. The Explorers were clearly outclassed by the light cruiser chasing them. However, back on the dayside of the planet was the party's other ship - the Raider Angevin's Blade.

After a Stern Chase, the Angevin's Blade fired and blasted the Light Cruiser, wounding it. However, in retaliation, the Light Cruiser opened fire with its twin lance cannons, crippling the Angevin's Blade.

Here's where I learned something interesting about the Rogue Trader ship combat system. All of the ship weapons are relatively equal. Yes, there are some ship weapons that are better than others. But a raider can access the most powerful lance weapons as easily as a cruiser. This means that even smaller ships can pack a really powerful punch.

When the Light Cruiser got into range, the Explorers scrambled the fighters and performed a hit and run attack on the enemy. To their great fortune, they were able to lead the crew to set fire to the Chaos ship's lance battery.

At that point, the Explorer's flagship pulled a crazy ivan, came about, and fired both batteries at the oncoming chaos vessel. With the combined firepower of both the Raider and Frigate, they tore apart the opposing Light Cruiser. After disabling the vessel, they were able to raid it for a sizable weapons cache.

My Thoughts Ship Combat Systems in General

This was our first real run of the ship combat system in Rogue Trader. I can tell you right now that I like them a lot.

Ship combat is a pretty tough concept to take on in roleplaying systems. I've seen a lot of different ship/craft combat systems over the years and most of them, unfortunately, fall flat. There are a number of notable exceptions, of course. Most combat systems I see for vehicles suffer because in a roleplaying game, it's mostly all about the characters. Not what they drive. So most of the time and effort in the game's design has been spent working on how character interactions and character combat works out. Not how vehicular combat works out.

Add to this the issue that most vehicle combat systems in RPGs almost always use a different mechanical system than the one used in personal combat. Which meant, in the past, that you now had to be responsible for two different combat systems. Add on top of that - an even bigger complication - how do the two systems interact? If a person starts shooting at a car, how do those two separate combat systems mingle without becoming entangled?

Some of the most headache laden vehicle rules that I've seen have been: 1st and 2nd Edition ShadowRun; Of Ships and the Sea (2.5 Edition D&D); but worst of all - 1st Edition Star Wars d20.

If you remember the first edition of d20 Star Wars, they tried really hard to make space ship combat completely abstract, with no minis or maps. In fact, you couldn't use minis or maps even if you wanted to. By making it too abstract, the whole system was very confusing. Especially when multiple ships were involved.

Some of my favorite vehicular combat systems in the past have been Spelljammer (yes, I said it). And the system in d20 Future. Both systems essentially treat ships and craft combat like character combat. Craft moved about on the battlefield like characters. They had similar abilities to characters as well.

What I like about Rogue Trader's system of ship to ship combat is the fact that the system is fairly abstract, but not too abstract. In ship to ship combat, you can represent your ship with a token or mini. Accumulating degrees of success on a ship piloting check allows one to make sharper turns or turn earlier in the ship's required movement.

All of this is very simple and very familiar if you've seen other ship combat systems. Where the game becomes abstract and neat is how it gives everyone on board the ship something to do. The characters in Rogue Trader have been designed so that they each have a special role on the ship. These roles allow them to interact with how the ship operates, allowing a ship to move faster, scan an enemy vessel, or even stage a raiding party on the opposing vessel. Also, a character on board a Rogue Trader vessel can try to rally the troops or give guidance.

That meant that when we were engaged in the battle, every single PC was rolling dice. Just this one innovation means a lot to me, because so many ship systems for RPGs just have the pilot and maybe a co-pilot shoulder the bulk of the responsibility. I've sat at many gaming tables over the years and many times, on a ship, I'd find that my character couldn't do much of anything. So, I would just sort of twiddle my thumbs while the big boys engaged in some vehicular fighting.

The Rogue Trader system is not like that. Everyone had to make checks to get various bonuses and benefits. More importantly, the various things that the PCs can do on board the ship are fairly significant. Many times, I've seen ship combat rules where one PC can give the engines a bonus, or adjust shields, or something like that. That's nice, but it's just throwing a PC a bone. Often times, just a small one. In Rogue Trader, having someone with a good Tech Use score matters. It significantly changes what your ship can or cannot do. Having someone who can lead a hit-and-run raid on another ship matters. Hit and run maneuvers do significant damage to opposing ships.

What I also like is that each roll the the PCs perform during ship combat is very broad and narrative. If you want to get into a fighter craft and attack the opposing ship, we don't get out more minis, put them on the map, and then stage a dogfight on top of the capital ship combat that is going on. A successful raid is determined by two rolls. One to see if the swarm of fighters reaches the enemy ship and another to see if the troops can successfully raid it. That's it. While this does boil things down and make them simplistic, it liberated me to allow of narration and storytelling in the combat.

For example, when the crew staged a hit and run attack on the cruiser, I allowed the PC controlling the fighter craft to narrate what the battle looked like and what they were doing to accomplish their successful goal.

One more thing to keep in mind about the Rogue Trader system - all ships do about the same kind of damage. There are certainly different grades of weapons, but for the most part, all ships can access the same weapons array. So, a Raider with a lance is just as damaging as a Cruiser with a lance. This makes the smaller ships fairly dangerous in their own right, even though they cannot take nearly the same amount of hits.

I'll leave you with a few pics of some of the ships I've painted up for the game.

The ship at the top of the picture is a cruiser that I painted up for Rogue Trader and our Star Wars game. I didn't want to dish out the serious cash it would have taken for a Games Workshop cruiser.

And here's the Explorer's ship - the Ferral Wolf to the left. To the right is a ship I was using as their captured Raider. However, we have a new more "accurate" model, now.

Character Profile: Kai Etchdar

2010-06-08T05:29:00.000-07:00

So I encourage player engagement in a campaign outside of the sessions themselves. Way back in the day, I tried to get the players to write journal entries of their adventures. As you might suspect, this met with horrible failure. After all, as soon as you have to do something, or even if you are just asked to do it - it feels like an assignment. I've even offer XP as a reward for character journals, and it gets a little more response, but not that much more.

I've noticed, however, from the past three campaigns that I've run that many times the players will want to get involved in the campaign...just not in the form of journal entries. I have one player who is an expert on Excel Sheets and so has built a ship-building Excel Sheet for our campaign. I have another player who loves putting together minis, so he's bought a number of ship minis for the campaign. And then there's the Rogue Trader PC who has already written two journal entries for the campaign.

I think this kind of thing is great. It reminds me of my time back in Minion Town, when a friend of mine would draw maps or do concept art based on what we were playing at the time. Or build lego models that reflected the characters or equipment in the game.

To try to foster this a bit more, I'm handing out in-game rewards for out-of-game work. If someone does work on the campaign outside of the game session, I might award bonus XP, an extra Fate Point, etc. This is more of a pat on the back than anything else. I want to acknowledge what the player is doing.

And that's where this blog comes in. As another way to celebrate players participating in the campaign outside of the game sessions, I can post their journal entries, thoughts, artwork, or minis right here as an acknowledgement of their hard work and effort.

That Brings Us to Kai Etchar

Kai is the Explorers' Explorator, played by Jared.

Jared stepped up to the plate and jumped into the campaign knowing nothing about the Warhammer 40k universe. And a big universe it is. As a character who associates with tech priests there was a lot of discussion about how 40k technology works. There was talk about machine spirits, machine rituals, and the like .

My take on Kai (I'll let Jared correct me if he wants to) is a young, brash, and eager explorator who has seen much of the universe in a very short period of time, much more than most anyone in the 40k setting does. Especially at the rate in which he has seen it.

Here's Jared's sketch of the character.

Here's a design for a device he's working in on the campaign. A device for reading the aura and demeanor of tech spirits.

This is the mini I finished up for the Explorator. Not bad for one of my first ever converted models.

View from the back.

All for now.

A Cast of Characters - Breathing Life into NPCs

2010-06-04T09:05:00.000-07:00

So, as the Explorers have been adventuring, they've been picking up NPCs along with them as they go. What is interesting, particularly in a campaign of this type, is that NPCs stick around. Usually, in campaigns I've run, an NPC might come and go. Perhaps they meet with the party and then go their separate way. In such cases, I've had NPCs disappear forever. Basically, the party just never does anything to warrant another meeting with that character.

However, in Rogue Trader, the Explorers have such a large ship that it's easy to incorporate particular NPCs into the crew. And once on the ship, NPCs can continually meet with the PCs. Thus, you can have a growing cast of non-player characters who grow and develop alongside the PCs.

Obviously, if you do this, you want to avoid video game type characters who sit in their room waiting for someone to talk to them. To avoid this, I wrote up a background for each NPC on the ship and then also wrote down one or two adventure hooks and personal goals for them. So if the PCs haven't really heard from a particular NPC for a while, I can just look up one of their adventure hooks or personal goals. Then, the NPC can actually approach the player characters. "Say, Lord Rogue Trader? I have a favor to ask of you...." From there, the resolution or non-resolution of the NPCs personal goal or quest can cause the relationship of the non-player character with the rest of the party to grow and change. Also, by keeping NPC goals in mind, I can have them react to things. "Captain! I must object to this course of action!"

One thing that I made sure of - I made each of their hooks and goals very short and quick. That way, I can glance at my NPC fact sheet and remind myself what it was that they have hidden in their past. I also made sure to only give them one or two. If I need an NPC to have more hooks, I can do that at any time. However, at the beginning of a campaign, I feel that it's a waste to put a lot of effort into developing random hooks that may go nowhere.

I've not had a chance to have one of my NPCs initiate something, mainly because the Explorers are currently busy with their own agenda. But I plan on this being a fairly regular thing once we hit the middle part of the campaign. All that said, in the latest session, two of my major non-player characters' goals came up. More on that later.

A Few Things - Good NPCs

Generally speaking, I've found that a good NPC has to be a really good supporting actor on stage. Meaning, they have to make an impression really fast, and then leave very quickly, so that the main characters (in this case the PCs) can do most of the talking.

Thus, it's helpful for NPCs to have little shticks or little hooks that can really convey who they are and what they are about in less than a minute. One good way to do this is to have a really distinct voice or accent for a character. A great example of this would be Demidov from the Dark Heresy episodes of the Minions of the Monster Podcast. With just a little accent and a few personality traits, Duck Sauce (the GM in those games) was able to make an NPC that the players really latched onto.

Unfortunately, I don't do voices nearly as often as I used to - mainly because I don't have the time to craft voices like I did in the past - but I've found that one doesn't need to be an expert impressionist to do a good character voice. A great example is Chris Perkins of D&D fame. If you watch this video podcast of Chris Perkins gaming with the creative team for Robot Chicken, you'll see that Chris does voices, but he doesn't have to make his own voice dramatically different. Just a slight alteration is enough to get the point across. In my opinion, this is a great example of how affecting a voice doesn't mean that you have to make an idiot out of yourself.

As I mentioned above, I've also found that helps me is to keep an NPCs goals and motives at the forefront in my mind. This helps them come to life whenever the game is running. For example, if I have an NPC whose mother disappeared on the plant of Sinophia and the PCs' space ship is going to pass by there, then that NPC should actually go and petition the PCs for a detour. And if the PCs don't stop by the planet, then perhaps he steals a shuttle and goes anyway. By keeping an NPCs ultimate goals in mind, it allows me to make living, breathing characters who do stuff when the PCs are not around.

Finally, I've noticed that people tend to remember intriguing characters and that they leave an impression most of the time. And one of the best ways to make an intriguing character is to give a character contradictory personality traits. Perhaps they're greedy, but have a soft spot for kids. Perhaps they're a stone-cold killer, but happen to be a really good chef and have the PCs over for dinner all of the time. If the tension is interesting enough, just having two contradictory traits can make for a character that will be remembered for a long while.

Another way to make characters memorable is to give them something a little more complicated than an adventure hook. Basically, give them an "unsolvable" problem. For example, a character might be a straight up coward in a gun battle. Or another character might have love problems. The only thing is that if you give an NPC one of these sorts of issues, you need to make sure that they're still things that party will care about.

If your NPC is a love-sick puppy, it's just as likely that the party will roll their eyes and not give his problems a second thought. If he's a coward, the party might leave him behind or expel him from the group. The trick is to make the NPCs problems matter to the party. For example, what if the ship's pilot has love-problem and it's affecting his performance on the ship? What if the colonial marines commander is a sadist and it's affecting the morale of the crew? By having an NPCs problem affect the PCs directly or indirectly, you give the player characters motivation for its resolution. The best part about these types of problems is that they can have long-lasting and far-reaching ripples throughout a campaign.

The Latest Crew Members

2010-05-29T22:02:00.000-07:00

What is kind of neat with the Micro/Macro system is how the player character's NPC roster can grow. As it grows, it means that the PCs are gaining more followers and expanding their influence. At the same time, it means that they are taking on more responsibility because there are more NPCs whose lives can be threatened or who can lose faith in the PCs.

I've found that to make the entourage system work, each NPC only needs about one or two scenes with the party. Thereafter, they can appear briefly and a very short scene and everyone sort of understands that they are there. More on this later.

Ishi - Planetary Expert

Picked up on Footfall as a consultant

Background: Ishi is a planetary expert - a dedicated explorer and soldier of fortune who has seen dirtside on countless worlds. Ishi grew up, hand-crafted by a guild of explorers. From the time she was a little girl, she was taught the way of her guild's explorations and techniques. However, her guild was long ago wiped out by the insidious actions of a xenos cult. Since that incident, much of her memory has been wiped out, for in her escape, her ship was lost in the warp for a time. Since her memory loss, she has made a name and life for herself exploring the fringe. Ishi's actual age is unknown to most. She appears to be a young woman but often hints at a past which stretches back at least a century.

Personality: Calm; curious; and wise

Represents: Ishi is an expert planetary explorer, but does not actually represent any crew population. The planetary explorers are represented by Brother Vhist.

Incabula - Second Navigator

Picked up on the Angevin's Blade, when the Explorers reclaimed the derelict vessel

Background: Incabula is a navigator with one of the great Nomadic Houses. The circumstances of her joining with the ship Angevin's Blade is not entirely clear, but it is believed that she was purchased with a number of other navigators for the small but significant Baetarn Merchant House. If the records are to be believed, the Angevin's Blade was a guardian vessel for a trade fleet which is now presumed lost to ork attack. It is unclear how precisely her ship was overtaken by orks. She is loathe to speak on the matter and it may be that she does not even rightly remember all of the details. Her mind has blocked portions of the details out.

As the navigator of a guard vessel, Incabula specializes in monitoring and watching the Warp. She seems to be a capable navigator, if a little touched in the head.

Personality: Distracted; blunt; and unhinged
Represents: Incabula represents the navigator and entourage of the Angevin's Blade.

Lieutenant Ergan Wright - Lead of the Remaining Crew of Lucien's Folly
Picked up when the crew of the Lucien's Folly was rescued from the Cauldron

Background: Ergan Wright is the last remaining member of the command structure of Lucien's Folly - an exploration frigate that was lost to the Cauldron in the Koronus Expanse. Ergan is a seasoned officer, who has seen many trials and tribulations as the leader aboard a free trading and exploration vessel. However, his commanders bit off more than they could chew when they went to the Koronus Expanse. Wright's men are utterly loyal to him. There is a special bond between all of the surviving members of the now-perished Lucien's Folly.

Personality: Haunted; grizzled; and stoic
Represents: Ergan Wright represents the crew members that are survivors of the Lucien's Folly - approximately 12,000 men and women in the Rogue Trader dynasty.

The Planet of Vedic

2010-05-26T13:34:00.000-07:00

Vedic is a super-massive terran type planet. It is three times the size of a standard habitable planet. Its gravity is .975 normal, due to the low density of the planet itself.

Geography

The planet is covered mostly by large savannas and plains, with some forests in the polar regions, where the temperatures are not as hot. Most of the planet is rolling plains, though a fair number of mountain ranges spread out across the surface. A fair number of volcanoes litter the surface of the planet, sometimes causing massive plains fires that can go on for thousands of miles. There is a single, great sea with a smaller continent in the center, so that Vedic resembles a strange eye of sorts when seen from space.

Flora

The dominant flora on the planet is some form of grass, which is amber in color and pliable. There are small “seas” of larger, more sturdy grass which is treacherous. The leaves there slice through clothing and skin if traveled through extensively.

Across the plains are small forests, which have towering and knotted trees with grey, geometrically rectangular leaves. Each one of these small forests seem to originate from a central large tree. It is speculated as these central trees reproduce very infrequently and send their seed far away, to create other small forests.

On the north and south poles of the planet are extensive forests, with a wide variety of trees. The forests at the extreme poles are covered in snow for most of the year. Life teems in these polar forests.

Fauna

The dominant fauna on the planet are large herd of deer-like creatures with silver scales on their head and neck. They have four eyes on their head and complex antlers which look like obsidian flames. These strange deer make clacking and whistling noises.

A variety of predators hunt these silver deer, but their primary enemy are large, hairy, and quadrupedal. These beasts have exceptionally wide mouths that turn up in an almost Cheshire grin.

Another species of note are two creatures who share a symbiotic relationship. Titanic, jellyfish-like creatures float through the skies that are both plant and animal. Making their homes inside these floating beings are flocks of bat-winged creatures who have no discernable heads. Their mouths are in their chests, and they have prehensile tails. The bat-like creatures service their massive floaters by inadvertently carrying a pollen-like substance from one of the floaters to another. The floaters subsist off of sunlight, rain, and occasionally floating down to take nutrients from the soil.

Ruins

There are the ruins of cities on Vedic. Over 250 cites can be found on the planet, most of which are so eroded as to be nothing more than rubble. About two dozen of them, however, are still largely intact. The communities are arranged in small clusters of super-communities. The remaining cities range from small villages to large hives of domed buildings, connected by sky bridges. These crumbling ruins date back a long ways, possibly back to the Age of Aposty.

Large statues of the emperor are features in many of the cities, as well as large statues of what can only be presumed as nobles.

The ruins of ships also lie on the surface of Vedic. Most are ancient and nothing more than corroding skeletons. A good many of these ships are ork ships. However, a number of ships, perhaps 6 or more are actually explorable and intact. Of the 6 remaining, 2 are of ork-make.

Fifth Session - On the Brink of a New World

2010-05-24T06:07:00.000-07:00

Well, the Spring has been a turbulent time for us. We have not gamed as often as I would like - but many of us have had busy lives. Luckily, these impediments seem to be temporary.

Our fifth session saw the crew of the Ferral Wolf finally leaving Footfall. The crew faced a triumphant return to the spaceport after clearing out a Raider-class ghost ship from an ork infestation. Upon reaching the spaceport, they were warned by the admiral of House Ontiverous that their victory, while good for them, was also a victory for the savage House Naraghast. According to Admiral Zephyr, House Naraghast will see their "gift" of a raider to the Explorers as a sign of alliance. Even if the Explorers do not. That means, if there is any activity that Naraghast is engaging in in the sector that the Explorer's don't like, they will have to carefully consider if they want to oppose it - because now Naraghast can claim that Holocene broke their alliance first.

Thereafter, the Explorers had to face the uncomfortable prospect of splitting their crew. After all, the raider they recovered had no crew to speak of and there were simply not enough free hands on Footfall to populate their new ship - The Angevin's Blade. I ruled that they could populate it to some extent, but that they would not be able to be choosy at all about their personnel. Essentially, they would be hiring on anyone who was a warm body for their ship. Not wanting to do that, they opted for splitting their crew between the two ships.

After this brief meeting, the Holocene finally left Footfall and traveled towards Vedic, their ultimate goal. On the way, they had an encounter near the Cauldron, which I ruled to be a super-massive black hole, which was infamous for drawing ships in. They received readings that another ship was being drawn into the Cauldron and was able to save part of their crew. This development was fortuitous because it helped them replenish their crew population, but certainly not all the way.

This small encounter was really neat for me because it reminded me of the Gaunt's Ghosts books - in that series, the Ghost division is made up of various survivors from a long campaign against Chaos. Inevitably, conflicts arises as the people from different planets mingle and interact. I look forwards to some interesting roleplay opportunities as the crew of these two ships mingle and become one.

After their rescue of some of the crew of Farizel's Folly, they finally proceeded to the planet Vedic. More about that later....

Adding a New Player...and Discovering the Limitations of the Rogue Trader System

2010-05-07T07:56:00.001-07:00

Bringing in a New Player

Well, sadly, it appears that one of our players is leaving us. And so soon! We had two Arch-Militants, but one of them has decided to head northward to greener pastures. We will certainly miss Casey's enthusiasm for our games.

But, serendipitously, we also have gained another player. Our long-time friend Nick has come back from the land of sand to engage with us again.

I wasn't sure how incorporating a new player would work with Rogue Trader. The game really wants everyone to sit down and make characters together. But I also thought that this was also a really neat opportunity. How does the game system hold up when someone comes in from outside?

We started with Nick's origin path and it turned out pretty well. He was able to make the character that he had in his head without too much adjustment. Then, we had to come up with how his character was coming into the game. Was he an old associate that the Explorers had known for a long time? Or was he a relative unknown. Because Nick hadn't been around and seen what kinds of characters everyone had, he decided to go with a relative unknown.

Here, we can see the path that he chose, drawn right on top of the origin grid the rest of the party used. I'm glad I kept it!

The Limitations of the Rogue Trader System

And here's where was ran into the limitations of the Rogue Trader system. I guess this is as good a place as any to discuss and explore the limitations we've found in Rogue Trader. Nick really had in his head this idea of a psyker who could control peoples' minds or at least something fairly spectacular.

However, upon examination, the Astropath character archetype does not allow one to make such a character. That's okay by me, sometimes players don't need all of the options in the world open to them. However, after making Rank 1 Astropath, it seemed pretty clear to us that a Rank 1 Astropath can't do too much of anything. They are fantastic at communication, but outside of that, they are fairly limited. They get to do some cool stuff at Rank 2, however.

Because Nick felt somewhat limited, he opted instead for making a Dark Heresy Imperial Psyker. Fortunately, we had that option. However, when we started examining the two games we noted some marked differences.

In both Dark Heresy and Rogue Trader, your character options are certainly narrowly defined. Unlike many other systems, there are Skills and Talents that you simply can't take, no matter what. I actually like that, because it reflects the Warhammer 40k universe. Its a very codified and medieval society.

However, in Dark Heresy, there were many options within the various careers. An Assassin could be a melee character or a ranged character. A Psyker could actually be a Jedi-like sword-wielding battle-psyker or a frail but mentally powerful juggernaut.

The roles in Rogue Trader seem to be much more pigeon-holed. For example, the Arch-Militant is touted as the supreme combat champion of the game, but pays more for Weapon Skill. Also, dual melee wielding is completely closed to them. Also, the Arch-Militant cannot get the Command skill until Rank 3, something that has seriously hurt the Arch-Militant in our game, since he's supposed to command the ship's troops.

My Suspicions

Here's what I'm thinking happened. Dark Heresy was a game put out by Black Library - a subsidiary of Games Workshop. And it was the first game of the 40k RPG series to arrive. I'm going to bet that Dark Heresy was crafted a little slower, more deliberately, and perhaps more playtest time behind it. (There are certainly still flaws in that game as well.)

It's possible that Rogue Trader was pushed out a little quickly or a little quicker than Dark Heresy and might have lacked more playtesting time.

All of this is just a guess. And I want to state emphatically that I'm still loving the game.

My Solution

Because certain characters seem to be lacking very vital Skills and Talents, I think what I'm going to do is this - every so often I was planning to award permanent Fate Points. At the end of a story arc, after a big accomplishment, etc. What I think I'm going to now is give the players a choice. They can have a Permanent Fate Point or they can gain access to any skill or Talent. Even if it's not on their list. While this is pretty powerful, keep in mind that this might only happen a few times in the whole campaign. And they'll still have to pay XP costs, which I might make somewhat steep. We'll have to see.

Battlefield Report 1: Raiding the Engine Room

2010-05-07T07:29:00.000-07:00

Well, I actually got to break out the terrain for our first full run of the Rogue Trader system. As described in my last post, they raided the engine room of the ship, the Angevin's Blade. As you can see, I was able to suggest a large engine room with the Manufactorum from the Imperial Sector, Star Wars Tiles, and finally some Dwarven Forge Sci-Fi terrain. The ork minis are from Hero Quest.

While it's not a full-on mock up of what the characters were fighting on, it does at least give an impression of what they are doing, and I'm satisfied with that.

Also, during the battle, I just had the PCs fighting with a few NPCs helping them. In exchange, they only had to fight a small crowd of orks, instead of a massive horde. Basically, this is the whole microcosm/macrocosm thing again. I explained that the battlefield was probably filled with orks, but most of them were being handled by the Explorers' crew. Instead of rolling for each crew member, we just kept most of the field empty and assumed that there was fighting going on. To keep a good picture in people's minds, I would occasionally pause and describe what the crew was doing in the battle and how they were faring.

And now, here's the large balcony of the bridge. The PCs had to fight their way to the top to trigger the switch which would vent the ship of orks. At the top, you can see the Explorator, who had to make the final adjustments and throw the switch.

And here's a pedestrian view of the battlefield.

Fourth Session - Battle Aboard the Angevin's Blade

2010-05-03T09:12:00.000-07:00

The third session of play found our rogue trader crew inside of their newly found derelict ship, battling the orks on board, trying to purge it of the green plauge, and claim it for their own.

This session was our first real and true exploration of the combat system in Rogue Trader. Mind you, we were pretty familiar with it from before - when we played Dark Heresy. We did have one player for whom the system was new, so I had to remind myself to go over the system with him once we got started.

One thing that this session held for me upfront was a surprise. When we closed out the previous session, the crew was fighting their way to the bridge, where an ork warboss was waiting. Matt shrewdly wondered if it were possible to get to the engine room instead and vent the whole ship from there, bypassing the whole warboss thing in the first place.

Thankfully, Matt proposed this idea ahead of time, so I had time to prepare for this eventuality. But what was neat was that this one decision altered the game significantly. Instead of a big climatic fight on the bridge, it was a more large-scale rout of the engine room. There were still orks there, but fighting a bunch of weird boyz wasn't as hard as fighting a warboss and his guard. So, I did my best to reward the players for their ingenuity and it was a great example of how a game master can always be surprised in the campaign.

One of the Explorers went to the bridge with a support team member to trigger the safety that was on the bridge. (I figured it wouldn't be too easy.) Anyhow, after a pitched battle in the engine room, they triggered the vents on the ship and the lone PC flipped the safety switch on the bridge.

To add a little drama to the session, the oddboyz in the engine room were powering up the ship and the warboss on the bridge was about to fire the ship's weapons into Footfall. Outside of the ship, the Imperial Navy fleet that the Explorers met earlier were prepared to fire as soon as the Angevin's Blade did. This added a time factor to the crew's efforts.

After the battle, the crew successfully shut things down before they were blown out of the sky by the Imperial Nay. And things got a bit more interesting. The Explorers found the ship's Navigator, who is not entirely sane after being on board the ship for so long with orks. She managed to survive the plague, but her mind is jarred.

And that's where we left off!

Good Novels for the Feel of Rogue Trader

2010-04-29T08:53:00.000-07:00

Almost all of my players (and past players) have heard me rave about the book Eisenhorn.

As far as an introduction into the Warhammer 40,000 universe, I can think of no better. Essentially, the Omnibus describes the exploits of an Imperial Inquisitor. As I understand it, author Dan Abnett wrote Eisenhorn as a novel that could show readers how an Inquisition-based campaign might run. It's one of my favorite novels of all time. The best part of this book series is, however, that you don't need to know anything about the 40k universe to enjoy it. My wife, who is a non-gamer read it and loved it. So that's saying something.

Well, that's great and all for Dark Heresy. But what about Rogue Trader, however? Well, there is Rogue Star, which is a dedicated Rogue Trader novel. I don't know too much about it, but I may have to check it out.

Bu the novel series that I've taken a lot of inspiration from for my campaign is The Saint, also by Dan Abnett. The Saint is an omnibus of four novels, which are part of the Gaunt's Ghosts series of novels. The Gaunt's Ghosts series of novels follows the exploits of a particular division of the Imperial Guard. Basically, these stories read like Band of Brothers mixed with Horatio Hornblower in the 40k universe.

Now, this omnibus is a series of novels about the Imperial Guard, not Rogue Traders. But reading it, I really saw how someone could use these stories as an inspiration for a campaign involving the large scope of Rogue Trader. The Gaunt's Ghost stories features a large cast of characters. The main character, Ibram Gaunt, is a man who is in charge of managing all of them. While the over-arching plot is a massive crusade, the true drama is the interplay of the characters, how they relate, and how they change each other. It gave me a lot to think about in terms of what might happen on a Rogue Trader ship.

In the Gaunt's Ghosts stories, a single private can do something which alerts the entire course of the plot or battle, for which they are sometimes recognized and sometimes not. Sometimes survival is just enough. But it got me thinking about how to run Rogue Trader in my mind. It got me thinking about how the crew aboard the ship is going to react to each and every event.

For example, what if different and important crew members develop romances between each other? What if there is a love triangle? What about a love triangle that is totally outside of the player characters' circle, but they have to resolve it in order for the ship to run properly? What if there are rivalries or vendettas between the various NPCs on the ship? What if a mystery breaks out aboard the ship? For example, what if one crew member murders another? What if it was for damn good reason? What if one of the minor crew members turns out to be a heretic? What about a latent psyker?

All of these things also make me consider another kind of Rogue Trader campaign. What about a Rogue Trader campaign that was more intimate and gritty? If you wanted to play a Rogue Trade game that was a lot more like Battlestar Galactica, for example, you totally could. That kind of Rogue Trader campaign would be much more like a Shakespearean tragedy. But I digress.

To give a quick review of The Saint, the omnibus is divided up into four novels. Each is a quick and easy read. The first book, Honor Guard is basically an action-packed battle scene with some battlefield drama and politics thrown in. It's the weakest of the four, but still really worth it. The second, The Guns of Tanith, is more about a battle and then stealth insertion. Here, the characters become much more developed and we see their relationships grow and change. Straight Silver is perhaps the best of the four, being not only the most character-driven of all of the novels, but a fantastic science-fiction "What if?" Essentially, the novel asks, what would happen if 21st century Army Rangers went into the front lines of World War I? What would happen and how do those things interact when modern warfare is introduced to archaic attrition warfare? Finally, Sabbat Martyr gives a very satisfying conclusion to the series, full of "Hell yes!" and "Finally!" moments as well as some real tragedy.

Even More Terrain!

2010-04-28T13:26:00.000-07:00

Aw, yeah. The plastic buildings have been treating me very well. Now that I'm done with my Witch Hunter project, hopefully I'll be able to get around to assembling the third building. As you can see here, I've now added the balcony to the basilica.

One problem with the balcony, there's a bit of gap at the bottom of it, which I'll use epoxy to fill up. And it's a tad tilted. But still, for my first Games Workshop building, I'll take it. All of the buttressing, which would have normally taken me possibly days to do or at least an entire afternoon were done in just a few minutes each evening with the help of my new best friend, glue accelerator. Now, I have to primer it and dry brush it. But I'll probably do that after I paint my Rogue Trader minis.

But even better than the finished basilica - a whole other building.

Here's the Manufactorm, on the left. I didn't follow the plan in the box and instead made this a three story structure instead of a two story structure. While it turned out okay, assembling the Manufactorum wasn't nearly as fun as when I followed a plan. There were a number of "oopses" and "accidents" that I had while putting it together.

But still, I was quite pleased at how it turned out. Here's a view from the backside of the terrain. You'll see more of this in the next post.

Character Journal 2 - H. Tiberius Holocene

2010-04-26T20:11:00.000-07:00

Matt's character logs continue to impress. Here's his character log for our 2nd session. I love the opening headings and the correct dating conventions. Such things make me grin inwardly with geekdom.

Day 128, 813M41
Log of Events
Ferral Wolf, comissioned 389M34
Captain H. Tiberius Odysean Holocene

Warrant of Trade # RV-426-G7-96-BFN4Y2

Granted to Rogue Trader Hester Nathaniel Holocene 623M35
Given leave to spread the light of the God Emperor to places unknown within Segmentum Obscurus.

Politics and intrigue. After encountering two other Rogue Traders, I realize now that I must be careful in what I say. The phrase silver tongued devil certainly comes to mind, and if I am going to succeed against such as these, I must be able to use every talent in my arsenal.

Footfall has shown that already this place, this Expanse does not operate under the same restrictions as the Imperium proper. However, just because law does not exist here in a traditional sense, it does not really give me leave to break my vows. Reputation seems to be as important, if not more so, than any amount of coin I carry, and I must ensure that mine remains intact, or this dynasty will soon find itself adrift.

I am honestly pleased with our trade agreement with House Kerin. While I am certainly wary of the prospect of them trying to extort us at some point, I know that they too have a reputation to consider. Moreover, my read of Nathaniel, their highest ranking member of their House here in the Kronus Expanse is of a person who is looking to do business and establish good relations rather than a cut-throat or a brigand. We will see in time if my hunch to form a trade agreement with them proves a good or bad decision. Still, we have, I believe, what weapons we need to start our colony, and have managed to procure at least basic versions of many of the supplies we will need to start it up.

I decided that it would be a waste not to look into the ruins on Vedic, the planet we're planning on settling. I have dispatched Sebastian and others to look into finding someone who will be able to take advantage of this, so that we might turn these ruins for a profit. Of course I dream of unique alien technology and relics either for our use or for sale, but there is something to be said about simply looking more closely into this seemingly extinct race. I find in this yet another joy of being out from under the oppression of the Imperium.

The encounter with House Narghast went, I believe, in my favor. The other Rogue Traders must know that just because we have been dealt a crushing blow, we are not fickle or weak, and I will not allow others to intimidate me. We still stand strong, and I will persevere. I will never trade for the "protection" that Lady Chorda was offering. While this might lead to hardships later, I know that the troubles we might face are nothing compared to being indebted to such as her.

House Ontiveros on the other hand was an entirely different encounter. I know our own Explorator was extremely interested in them, he did little to hide it. They have a sense of curiosity about them that seems like innocence. Perhaps this is their true nature, but I will, as ever, remain on my guard. Still, they seem trustworthy enough to deal with and perhaps work alongside.

The arrival of the Ghost Ship was something that caught everyone's attention. Honestly, I am glad that the Governor of Footfall had the three of us meet to discuss what would happen with it, because I do not think I would have come out on top of a skirmish, let alone a full scale battle. I am also glad that Admiral Balter accepted my invitation to appear. I would like very much to get a chance to catch up with him before he leaves in search of the Angvein fleet.

I was shocked at how easily I was able to convince the other houses that the ship should remain intact, and that I gained custody of it. I wonder what I really gave away with the deal with Chorda, and I fear that I won't know the true extent until it may be too late. As for Lady Ontiveros, I wonder what they knew when they said they would not help us in bringing the ship under our control. I only hope there is no animosity there, as I would enjoy forming an alliance with that dynasty if possible.

Now it is time to rally the troops in preparation for... well in preparation for anything. I have won the right to claim this ghost ship, now it is time to take her as mine!

Been Busy

2010-04-09T20:59:00.001-07:00

So...I've not posted in a while. Been busy working on...things. We had our third session, however. I hope to post more soon.

Here's a peek at what I've been working on. As if you haven't already guessed.

Modding Them Up!

2010-03-28T13:57:00.000-07:00

So, I said that I was going to be modding up some figures for Rogue Trader. Well, thankfully I had help. Here's the real and true star of the miniatures modifications I've done so far. A little white skeleton.

The skeleton here is part of a series of skeletons with guns that I got a while back from my buddy Mik. I got them for free and over the years, a number of their guns have broken off. In fact, the gun you see off to the right is one of those guns that broke off. When I was sorting through my bits, I noticed that these guys' guns look a little bit like bolt pistols. Perfect for Rogue Trader.

So, I took a lot of the loose guns that had broken off of the skeletons and put them right onto some of the figures I got for the team. Here's the Explorator. I just took off his axe and substituted it with one of the skeleton guns.

Now, I have to admit that I was a bit nervous about this, because I've maybe done something like this once or twice. But it was not as bad as I thought and it turned out pretty well, I think. The trick for me was to get the wrist right on the figure. If the wrist wasn't cut right, then the skeleton hand and weapon looked to be at an odd angle. I had to really concentrate and visualize where the Explorator's wrist should stop and his hand began.

The next guy I modded was the front-line Arch-Militant. He was a blast to modify. I started with sawing off one hand and replacing it with the large fist that I showed off in my last post. Interestingly enough, the large fist originally belonged to a cybernetic ape miniature. Ape X, by name. My friend Andy would probably see the poetry in this, since he's a big fan of the super-apes.

First I added the fist.

You'll note in the picture above that the pommel of the figures sword still remains. Here, it almost looks like it's sticking out of the fist. Instead of sawing the pommel off, it gave me an idea and I incorporated it into a further modification.

I thought to myself, what's a power fist without a power pack to give it energy? So I added a contraption onto the back of this miniature and made the pommel on the figure's wrist look more like an energy cord that attached back to the power core.

I then took off the other sword and mounted on another skeleton gun. The end result looks great, but I'll post that later.

EDIT: I totally forgot to post this - where I got the Arch-Militant's power pack from. I happen to play a lot of Warmachine and I also happened to have an extra Durgen Madhammer. I went through my bits to see what I could find to use as a backpack and I found my extra Durgen fig. The head of his hammer is what I used as the power pack. Thanks to oniakki for the reminder!

Meet the Team!

2010-03-24T23:54:00.001-07:00

So, I came into some birthday money recently and I bought figures to represent each of the characters in the Warrant of Trade campaign. I did this for my previous Dark Heresy game, but only managed to paint up one figure. Bleah.

Why just one figure? Well, my soul got captured by the white dominatrix. You know. The one with the green ring and the sweet, sweet call of a cooling fan? Anyhow, after I crawled up out of the hole that was Dragon Age and Mass Effect 2, I got my life back and I'm back on the minis wagon.

Instead of buying really expensive Games Workshop figures, I went and bought some Reaper minis on recommendation by the guys at Minions of the Monster Master. Almost all of the figures I bought were fantasy figures and I decided to modify them to fit the campaign. I was more than a little nervous about this because I've hardly ever modified a miniature. And here I was going to do the whole lot of them! So here's what I started with:

The Explorator

Probably the best find of the lot. The figure looks very much like the Explorator from the book. He's got the mask and the hood. And a backpack full of stuff! The axe could probably be easily replaced with a gun. Jared's Explorator does look different from the one in the book, but this will get the idea across.

The Rogue Trader

This figure was another great find. The name of this guy was "Lord Jester, Mercenary". That title, and the sheer attitude for this guy fit the bill for our Rogue Trader. Matt's told me he wants to use Phineas Shea as his figure. If he still wants to do that, no problem. Lord Jester will still be mod up and paint.

The Front-Line Arch-Militant

This may be my favorite figure of the bunch. I just love this guy's pose. Patrick described his guy as basically the size and build of a pro-wrestler in armor. And that's exactly what this guy is. The fist you see on the ground is what I plan to use as the character's power fist. Which means, of course, saw off one of those great swords and replacing it with the fist. Sad, but necessary.

The Strategic Arch-Militant

Casey described his character being very much the commissar, with a large shield and rifle. I found this great officer figure. My hope is to use a shield from one of my Warmachine figures. Not sure what the right gun is, however. If the figure looks like he's leaning, he is. Haven't glued him into his base in this shot.

The Seneschal

Doug's going the creepy and sinister route with his Seneschal. I happen to have an old Necromunda figure that I think fits that bill. Plus, the flamer could possibly suggest a hellgun, which is what the Seneschal is using. Technically, the Seneschal looks like twelve different people in a day because he's always in disguise. However, his figure seems to be mysteriously blank enough that it might work.

The Void-Master

Last game, Tony created a charismatic, good-looking chap. So, it's appropriate that he's made a twisted and disturbing mutant for this game. Sad thing is, I don't have a figure that looks like a necromorph from Dead Space. Nor could I find one. However, this flagellant is a Warhammer 40k figurine that gets the idea of the "twisted man" across. Plus, he's already painted.

Next time, I'll start getting into how I modded these guys up!

More Narrative Combat - Aboard the Derelict Ship

2010-03-24T12:27:00.001-07:00

The session closed out with the Explorers opening the derelict ship and discovering that it's infested with orks! We did some narrative combat to get the idea across of a battle with hundreds of troops to either side.

What I did was to use the squigs stats from Creatures Anathema. Then, I just wrote down a large number of hit points. What I ruled was this - the party had to do 400 points of damage to the general squig horde within 3 rounds. Failing that, their forces would be pushed back out of the ship and the ork horde would spill out into Footfall. Bad news.

So, instead of hardcore miniatures and tactics, I had them roll attacks and damage. Weapon Penetration added to the damage. At the same time, each round each member of the party was subjected to 2 squig attacks. Just 2 squig attacks a round was bad! One of the Arch-Militants had to spend a Fate Point to stay up!

The team was able to pull out a victory and push back the horde of squigs that attempted to pour off of the ship. To keep the encounter narrative, I allowed each player to narrate what their character looked like as he was inflicting damage onto the oncoming horde. It made for a great scene and allowed each character to shine.

Then, each party member had to make a specialized skill test to represent them pushing on into the ship. The seneschal was stalking and hiding through the ship as a scout, so he made a Concealment check. The explorator was spotting for trouble, so he made an Awareness check. And so on.

The results were interesting. Half of the party blew the rolls. Based on what rolls succeeded, I ruled that the party had kept their troops out of trouble. However, the blown rolls meant that their troops' morale was severely shaken. Right about that time, the Explorers rounded a corner and ran into an ork nob. We ended there on a cliffhanger.

Third Session - Footfall Explored

2010-03-22T00:00:00.000-07:00

The second session of actual play started with a quick rundown of the status of the ship. Between sessions, the rogue trader's player wisely emailed me with a series of ship's orders. This helped expedite play and actually helped accomplish two of the objectives of the Explorer's first Endeavour.

Getting Things for a Colony

Upon landing at Footfall, I had the party make some choices. They had earlier indicated that they wanted to establish a colony on a distant planet. I ruled that they had the equipment and personnel to do so, but it would be a bare-bones operation. I gave the group a list of settlement "upgrades" similar to what a rogue trader ship might get.

Defense

For basic defense, I ruled that they had enough las guns and flak armour to give to the colony guards, but only the colony guards. They had to pick and choose from the following upgrades.

Las-guns for All Colonists
Armor for All Colonists
Orbital Defense Weapons
Nerve-Gas Defense
Holo-Stealth Screen

Productivity

I ruled that they had enough equipment for the colony to farm and be self-sustaining. They could pick from the following upgrades. Each one would produce products over and above what the colony needed to sustain itself.

Mining Facilities
Farming Facilities
Manufactory Facilities

The party ended up picking point defense weapons (which we made up on the fly), orbital defense weapons, as well as mining and farming facilities. What was neat about this was that the whole group could sit down and talk about what they wanted and I could just sit back and watch. This is my favorite kind of role-playing - one that requires as little GM input as possible.

I also liked this encounter because it's something that you just don't see in other game settings. You're negotiating and discussing equipment that may save lives. And you're working on a grand scale. You're talking about colonizing a planet.

Thereafter, negotiations were made and an Acquisition Test was made for each item they selected. Because their role-playing was so good, I ruled that they got their items no matter what, but a failed Acquisition Test would mean that their buying power would be crippled for a while and that they would have to wait a while until another purchase of any kind. Again, by stating these stakes up front, I was trying to create both tension and a sense of impartiality.

Other Stuff

Also while on Footfall, the party had a run in with two of the other rogue trader houses - The Naraghast and the Ontiverous. The group blew off an alliance with the Naraghast, looking down their noses at their piratical activities. Meanwhile, they did agree to an information exchange with the Ontiverous.

The group decided to look for yet another dedicated crew member to add to their roster - an individual who excels and exploring and encountering alien life. By consulting the local psychic oracle, they were pointed in the direction of someone known only as "Ishi".

Just as they went to go recruit another member onto their ship, the Ferral Wolf contacted the Explorers to alert them to a potential problem and opportunity. Mysteriously, a ghost ship pulled into port at Footfall and then proceeded to drift about, powerless and lifeless. All three rogue trader clans met to discuss how the ship should be divided. The whole table also gave a cheer when the local admiral of shoreleaven Imperial vessel spoke on their behalf. After all, it was the Holocene dynasty's sacrifice which saved a large portion of the Battle Fleet Calixis in the flashback of the first session. Finally, the party's rogue trader made an impassioned speech about how their dynasty should be awarded the ship.

Interestingly enough, the Naraghast dynasty acquiesced to this proposal...in exchange for a non-aggression pact with the Explorer's rogue trader dynasty. Which is precisely what the Naraghast Dynasty wanted out of the party in the first place. Again, another great example of why I like this game. It's all about deals, double-deals, and courtly intrigue. Unfortunately, I have a feeling that this deal will come back to haunt the party.