Bretonnians at the Student Nationals 2012

So at the weekend I ran two sets of victims through my demented WFRP2E adventure. You can see what I am talking about at this micro-site. Maps, character sheets and the first 2 pages of the scenario are available.

This story was playtested by Naomi, Len, Josh, Fake-Charlie and Simon in Derby, who gave a lot of valuable feedback (mainly on tweaking the character sheets to avoid Death-By-Handouts and to be readable to a non-WFRP2E literate group of ne'er-do-wells). I did worry when we started around 3pm and finished around 2am, but we did faff quite a lot and my poor beloved Naomi got saddled with the female spellcaster with 6 pages of rules. The poor lass can still only count her RPG experiences on 2 hands. Coincidentally both tables at the con had exactly 1 girl and out of personal preference I preferred to give the girls the female character. I had a 2nd female character in case they wanted to play a fighty-type or we had more than 5 players, but Brunhilde the Norse Beserkeress was Lady Not-Appearing-in-this-Scenario both days.

The games themselves were a success. It was essentially a WFRP version of "The Quest for the Unholy Grail", chasing after a blasphemous Slaaneshi artifact that mimics and mocks the titular Grail of Bretonnia, with a white rabbit similar to the one-from-that-film. I've changed the scenario title about five times. It was set in Carcassone in Bretonnia, in an area called the Auveau Campagna. It was inspired by some of the Warhammer novels I've reviewed in earlier posts. Certainly the Knights of Bretonnia book and C.L. Werner's excellent Red Duke novel (read it on holiday, review forthcoming) were a big inspiration.

Some of the players on the second day commented that I'd made a lot of effort on the character sheets and character bios, though I think if your players pay over £100+ for accomodation, travel and convention fees they deserve a DM who didn't write the scenario on a beer-mat the night before. Both groups politely asked if they could keep their sheets and handouts, which was a nice compliment and I hope they like them.

Unlike in the playtest both days a character picked up an additional insanity. One the first day the Grail Witch picked up "Fire Bug" (i.e. pyromania) on encountering a ghost and failing a terror check. She roleplayed this reasonably well but sadly didn't burn down the inn the ghost was in.

On the second day brave Sir Tristan de Graal, Knight of the Grail, gained what was essentially depression on failing his terror check with the aforementioned ghost. Since he shortly afterwards learned from the ghost he would have to sacrifice his life to destroy the Unholy Grail it seemed kinda fitting he'd start to wish he was wrapped up in bed.

PC: "Why have you not done something about the ghost in your inn?"
Peasant: "Who am I going to call...Why did I just say that?"

While writing the scenario I thought it would be rubbish to have all 6-7 players playing knights in WFRP. Pendragon allows for diverse knights, but WFRP knights only differ in which munchkiny virtue talent they choose from Knights of the Grail. I then decided to add a herrimault (Robin Hood type peasant), but then make him outrageously over-the-top. Hence Caradas de Bergerac (Cyrano's little known cousin) was born. Probably he'll get retconned into de Berac to make it less obvious if I ever use that character again.

My favourite player was one who played Henchard, the Battle Pilgrim. Grail Pilgrims are basically weird groupies who follow Grail Knights around collecting discarded sundries to use as relics. This particular pilgrim was inspired by Baldrick in Blackadder: The Archbishop, and one player in particular relished wheeling and dealing in relics all the way through the scenario. As the only 'real' peasant in all 3 runs of the scenario I worried that this character might be a pain the arse to play as all the noble PCs had the license to torture him. This poor chap was reduced to riding on a donkey (the knight PCs suggested he be loaned a donkey, not a horse, even though the Duke of Carcassone was happy to lend him riding horse), but ultimately he wound up on the deal (as did the character in his other 2 incarnations).

Perhaps the most troublesome character was the Grail Witch. For some reason I cannot fathom Knights of the Grail does not allow PC Grail Witches (claiming they're too game-breaky with their prophetic skills) and a lot of the other careers like knight, yeoman etc. are 'male-only unless you play a woman pretending to be a man' and suggests this practice is very widespread!

Anyway, I found some rules for Grail Damsels and collated them into 1 pretty document. Thus Guenere de Chanel, Prophetess of the Grail, was born. My take on the Grail Damsels is roughly inspired by some of the sorceresses you *ahem* encounter in the Witcher 2 (a great CRPG you should check out BTW). All 3 lasses playing this character made pretty good use of her arsenal of spells - including the awesome Doom of Dol on the 2nd day with a pretty epic intonation of "Sir Luc du Besson, you will slay Sir Lancet d'Ouest."

One thing I will say was, the brief for the convention was to write an "Action & Adventure" scenario, and WFRP2E is not exactly the first system you think of (7th Sea is IMHO, or possibly Feng-Shui). However knights, dragons, damsels, explosions, fires and mutants all made it pretty action packed, although it was very high-fantasy (most PCs were in their 3rd or 4th careers and in the 2nd day in particular were bricking it during combats against mutated 1st-2nd career dudes).

I might return to Bretonnia one day. I've the idea for a low-fantasy campaign called "The Ballad of Derrevin Libre" which mixes resource allocation, Edgar Allen Poe, Arthurian knights and the French Revolution. Suffice it to say the PCs will be hedgefolk, peasants and servants, not knights of the realm.

(Artwork on this post and the sheets was Google Imaged without permission).

Stuff I Would Like to Run

The Student Nationals are coming up in a few weeks time and I am hastily prepping my scenario, Vessels. It's a Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 2nd Edition scenario, and I will not say anymore about it for now, though I've some vague notion of publishing it on my site for posterity after the Nationals, along with some of the amusing PCs I created.

I ran a playtest of it this weekend in lieu of our regular WFRP 3E game and it was a lot of fun despite the fact only 1/2 the scenario was statted and written (though I was using monsters out the books, except in one case).

It overran dangerously, but our group is prone to much faffing and silliness. This session was no different, but there was significant character development for every PC, which is difficult to do in a one-off, as well as 3-4 combats - including one very memorable one where the missus managed to mind-control a very, very powerful monster in such a way as the other PCs made mince-meat of it.

The only real rub was we only had 5 players, and I had designed the scenario for 6-7, including hastily genning one of the PCs the night before.

This means I've been bitten by the DMing bug, and there are a couple of WFRP campaigns I've got real interested in running. Sadly my only outlet is our WFRP3E game, which is a lot fun, but lately I seem to count down the days til our next game. I do plan to do a review of the system here (it is a bizarre experimental hybrid of board/card game and RPG) but the following factors have prevented me:-

a) It'd be -very- long.
b) It'd be fairly negative, though I've thought of some positive things to say - most of the 3 WFRP3E scenarios I've played or read have seemed pretty good. The only real let-down was, ironically, the major campaign boxed set we played through, though it's not the first WFRP scenario to have those flaws.
c) I worry my DM might hit me with a stick as he has probably invested £200+ (seriously, this is not a cheap game) in buying most of Fantasy Flight Games's shiny but shallow boxed sets and has every right to feel defencive of the system.
d) I don't own it, beyond some pdfs I've pulled off the web.

In the mean time I've become quite keen on WFRP2E. In addition to my playtest I ran an old converted scenario, Night of Blood at one of the Derby meetups I actually managed to make. The system holds up quite well, and I've a hankering to run a proper campaign, though that may wait until I finally get a bigger place to live with a games room. But here they are:-

The Dying of the Light

Mine! Mine I say!

I won this module at the Student Nationals in the late 90s when it was held in Glasgow for being the team leader and for us coming 2nd/3rd/4th or something I've long since forgotten. I presume Hogshead provided the prize support. Since no-one else claimed it, it sat on my shelf for years until I started buying the WFRP2E line. It seems to have accumulated significant value on Ebay.

Tangent 1: Not that I plan to part with it - it's mine, MINE, and was probably the only thing I ever got, in lieu of actual gratitude for being DURPS president and organising the society's nationals trip at a time when I had no car, much less a sat-nav and the only driver in the club who'd give me a lift didn't know where Glasgow was. One fellow even wanted an impromptu election at the Nationals to take the post of president off me when it looked like we might actually win, which was gratitude for ya and cemented my "take a hike you ingrates" attitude towards any overtures to get me back on the committee. Anyway, rant over. I didn't feel bad about keeping the module.

This is actually a set of linked adventures by different authors set in Marienburg and the Wasteland, Warhammer's answer to Amsterdam and the Netherlands. It's an interesting scenario as it gives the DM a lot of free-reign in running the scenario. A lot of the text is very conversational, "You might want to do this... if they do this, consider having maguffin behave like X, Y or Z, depending on which you think is more interesting"

It's fairly short (probably it would take 3-4 months of weekly play), but relatively epic in scope. There's some weird goings on in Marienburg, some talk of an eclipse of the sun by the Chaos moon and the city being destroyed. The heroes are drafted in through a rather long prologue that tries to leave the "you meet a man in a bar and he hires you to do the scenario" cliche behind, but instead assumes you've given the PCs a hook to go look up an NPC... who begs them to do the scenario. I'd probably tinker with this - there's some good Marienburg stuff in Warpstone to kick off this campaign with.

There's some crazy stuff in this module. Very little of it is set in the city, it is mainly a wilderness trek with a few rural encounters and sinister apocolyptic tones. One long-banished Warhammer/Heroquest monster makes a welcome entry in a particularly apocolyptic chapter of the scenario that I'm amazed made it past Games Workshop's sanctioning nazis as not only does it feature these creatures but it references Malal, a chaos god that Games Workshop technically do not own copyright on.

Some of Dying of the Light's maguffins are a bit suspect. There's a NPC that certain more psychotic players will want to murder (and only vague suggested consequences for doing so). There's the old magic compass maguffin, basically leading the PCs by the nose. Aside from the fact the writers forgot the PCs might try to triangulate their intended destination it suffers from the old RPG trope of being told "this trail/map/ is the safest route to your destination" and discovering it leads you through a series of suspiciously planned encounters and ambushes. It's pretty easy to fix that plothole in the scenario though.

Another downside is that it is a WFRP1E supplement (although 1E and 2E are pretty easy to convert on the fly. Don't get me started about 3E though!). Perhaps the last disappointment is this is for 2nd career characters. In WFRP you often start with a random and often pretty lame career - such as Rat Catcher or Servant (though WFRP2E wittled this away by making most careers fairly combat-orientated, nobles were no longer fops but deadly fencers, and WFRP3E starting characters are all superpowered gurus). Your 2nd career is typically chosen by you and is a more "adventurer" career. It's also typically when you finally get spells if you are a priest, or decent spells if you are a wizard.

The Thousand Thrones

The rather spiffy cover is actually a pretty major spoiler.

The Thousand Thrones is an epic, sprawling beast of a campaign taking PCs from Marienburg into the Empire, and eventually into the distant north. It was designed to use a lot of the WFRP 2nd Edition sourcebooks, such as the Kislev sourcebook. In many ways it is the WFRP 2nd Edition to the Enemy Within - although this is one book with numerous web-enhancements, rather than a series of books.

Set shortly after the Storm of Chaos (a large wargame event that saw Chaos overwhelm the north of the Empire and a possible reincarnation of the Emperor-God Sigmar managed to defeat its leader at the cost of his own life) this is one of the few Warhammer 2nd Edition scenarios that actively builds upon the events of that campaign rather than generically paying lip-service as part of Games Workshop's edicts at the time.

Tangent: It's worth noting the designers of WFRP suggested they make the rulebook setting neutral (i.e. pre-Storm of Chaos) and release books and adventures to handle the Storm of Chaos. Lead designer Chris Pramas suggested options for letting you play before the Storm, one during and one in the Age of the Three Emperors, but no, Games Workshop knows best. Incidentally the new WFRP is set before the Storm of Chaos.

A possible new incarnation of Sigmar has come to prominence, and has been blessed by the exiled Grand Theogonist Esmer. The PCs must chase after this charismatic avatar, leading to all sorts of interesting scenarios. It's a complete 256-page campaign crammed with information (the font size is criminally small) that could easily take a year or so to play through (though the campaign could end earlier depending on player decisions). I mananged to get it for about £15 on Ebay so I'm giggling.

In many ways it calls back to Dying of the Light. It is written by several authors and each chapter is a mini-scenario in itself. It begins in Marienburg but sends the PCs away chasing a maguffin fairly early on. It is probably best not played by ultra-lawful characters (no zealots, witch hunters and fire-brand wielding priests of Sigmar) as some of the maguffins involve working with Chaos infected characters.

There is a good mix of investigation and combat, though I'm only really familiar with the first half of the campaign. The ending of the campaign is notoriously rotten, resembling a player-killer dungeon crawl. Also like Dying of the Light the beginning scenario assumes the PCs are somehow already involved in events and does not provide more than basic hooks to get the PCs involved in the scenario - it is largely left up to the Dungeon Master and the player to play ball.

I listened to this being played on the RPGMP3 website. This is run by an exasparated Brit expatriate and played by a group dominated by Texans who sound like Yosemite Sam and really, really struggle with the more intellectual and investigative aspects of the scenario. Worryingly they remind me of when I was 17 and 'trying' to play Call of Cthulhu. It also highlights to me why the DM must have razor sharp adamantium hooks to ensure the PCs remain motivated to investigate the maguffin of the scenario.

This is not a ready to run campaign on its own, unlike earlier WFRP 2nd Edition scenarios. The Thousand Thrones as provided is a reasonably interesting campaign but significant tinkering is required to keep it on track, particularly if the characters go off track.

There is substantial online support and advice on tinkering. One of the authors, Jude Hornburg, has released several online supplements for it and it's nice to see as some WFRP 2nd Edition felt a bit 'churned out' by freelancers (like the ubiquitous Robert J. Schwalb, who wrote many of the more so-so supplements as well as the much criticised end to this scenario. Though to be fair he is credited with also coming up with the interesting central concept). Jude's latest effort will include an introductory scenario that actually gives the PCs hooks to follow the rest of the campaign.

Own Stuff

For a while I've been tossing around a WFRP2E campaign idea I came up with called "The Ruinous Powers That Be" when overdosing on George RR Martin stuff. I've actually written most of the first scenario up as a full PDF, with the second scenario being . At once point I considered making the 2nd scenario my Nationals scenario, but as the category I'm running in is "Action" chasing drug-dealers and phantoms around the hills didn't really seem classically action enough.

The other campaign idea I've been tossing around is a Bretonnian campaign where the PCs all play downtrodden peasants, based on Graeme MacNeill's story, Freedom’s Home or Glory’s Grave with a smattering of Robin of Sherwood, Edgar Allen Poe and the French revolution thrown in.

Site Migration... Sometime Soon!

Finally got round to launching my personal domain http://www.skerrigan.co.uk and a hosted site archiving all the Onnwal material from the Living Greyhawk campaign. It's hosted by http://www.byethost.com who actually seem to be providing a pretty good free hosting package - you get FTP accounts, php and MySQL thrown in for free!

As soon as I figure how I will be migrating this blog over to http://blog.skerrigan.co.uk - don't hold your breath though, that might be a while.

Happy Birthday Blog!

In all the excitement I forgot to wish my blog a Happy Birthday. I started writing it on the 21st of February 2005 in preparation for the move to Leicester, and I'm still writing it. Worryingly this represents the most commitment in my life at the moment!

Since I forgot it's birthday I'd better get it something on the way home.

The End of Days

I'm on my hols now, having finished up at the University of Leicester for the year. After shopping in Nottingham I'm about to put my feet up and watch Nightmare on Elms Street. Yes, somehow I got through the last 26.8 years without seeing any of the films except New Nightmare.

Compared to the past few days at work I imagine this movie will seem quite chilled out.

Suffice it to say that the fact, or perhaps because of the fact that I had no real work to do beyond helping the students. Friday on the other hand was plain weird. I'll elaborate on this in more detail at another point, beyond saying the chaps and I went to the Landsdowne for an Xmas lunch. It was good though we needed a Mathematician to work the bill out for us! Then after spending the afternoon doing what little work I could do before closing time I caught Happy Feet at the cinema - which was quite amusing, though the graphics on that film must have been a pain to

I've also been playing around with Facebook, which seems to be a strange marriage betwixt MySpace and Photobox. It does have a nice interface for loading photographs, much much nicer than my Buzznet because you can upload an entire directory of images at the click of a button rather than spending all night specifying each inidividual image path. It also has an RSS feed from my blog, though to be honest that sucks as all my YouTube movies don't show up (so if you are viewing this through Facebook go to this link instead and a lot of the posts will make sense). I may retire the RSS feed if it gives me too many problems.

I've got a few albums on Facebook now that I will put on this blog as soon as I remember. The Buzznet account will be retired at some point - it is just too plain slow to browse, or to upload to.

Retro-Stu

Today's post is date February 2005, as I never completed the post properly the first time. Read it here if you are curious.

Further Adventures of Stuart Special Edition

Originally this blog started with a song made by Chris (Alistair) Kydd when he didn't think anyone was using the Nintendo in his room.

Make me a cup of your tea,
But do not pour it down the sink,
Where it would end up in the drink,
What a waste that would be...

However in a George Lucasesque fashion I didn't really think this was the first blog post I really wanted to make. Granted the iambic pentameter and rhyme scheme is fine but it just don't think it was the blog post I set out to make. Much like George's wise move of revamping Star Wars to include Greedo shooting first, or a gratuitous appearance by Jabba the Hutt and Boba Fett I feel it necessary to revise the first post to include lots of background information not included in the original four line classic first post.

Obviously I mean no disrespect to Chris, so I've kept his original poem in, though I've played with the punctuation a little, tidied up the font and made it inferior to the original work. I plan on releasing the original post as a limited edition extra on the fifth or sixth DVD of this blog in ten year's time.

Some time in October-November 2004 I was sat at my desk rather bothered by the fact I was viewing my last PhD stipend payment and that I'd spent the last few months looking round for a job rather fruitlessly. Unlike when I graduated in 2001 with my BSc and decided to leave Dundee, go to the other end of the country and work, which ironically ended with me working in Dundee on a PhD, I decided this time to stay in Dundee or Scotland at least and not apply for any jobs darn sarth.

I then noticed a job for Demonstrators at the University of Leicester. I remember rather excitedly telling the guys in the office as it read like quite a cool job and ideal for me to do while finishing up my PhD. How naive I was back then.

I applied, and with most academic posts was told that if I didn't hear back in 1 month I was to simply assume I'd not been shortlisted.

Naturally two months later, on the 23rd of December, I was contacted by Leicester's personnel. I was leary about going to the interview in January, but they sorted me out a hotel. I'd been to Leicester for two Student Nationals, so I wasn't a complete noob to the place. It was, as I recall, a bugger to get to from Dundee, especially by public transport while the train ride was 8 hours I had picked up a copy of The Earthsea Quartet from the library Lesley used to work in, Arthurstone Community Library, so I was occupied. I honestly didn't expect to get the job and given it wasn't in Scotland I wasn't too bothered.

I got off the train and there was a 60 mile and hour sprint up the London Road to the Gables Hotel via taxi, which ended with me musing briefly on how I didn't really need to have taken the taxi, but I was on interview expenses (despite the letter's veiled threats that they would not honour them if I decided not to take the job).

The hotel didn't exactly fill me with great hope. The next hotel along was far bigger, shinier, nicer and didn't have police lights from police cars all buzzing around it. Nor, did I expect, did it have a desk clerk bearing a worrying resemblence to Peter Lorre. It was a little dingy, dusty, run down and the architect didn't believe in Euclidean geometry or the need for straight lines when hanging pictures, mirrors.

Compared to some of the places I stayed in Leicester after this interview it was a palatial mansion.

I also, at 7:45pm decided to get some dinner. Being as how I was near a university I reasoned there would be many takeaways nearby. This would also allow me to get acquainted with my surroundings and find where I was going tomorrow.

I should've asked Peter Lorre Jnr. which way the Uni was, as by following the directions in my info pack I found myself at the Oadby/Manor Road. The man at the garage insisted the university was further up there, but I felt I was leaving town very quickly and turned back. I think Peter Lorre Jnr. pointed me in the right way eventually, telling me the garage guy was an idiot and that he thought I wanted the uni halls of residence.

My journey to the University campus was devoid of takeaways and it was now 9pm, well past my dinner time. Nonetheless I had found the Computer Science department and knew where I was going. I was also quite tired and hungry and decided to keep walking to the city centre...

... by a route still devoid of takeaways. It was about 9:30pm by the time I stumbled into the Last Plantaginet, begging them to still be serving food and praising Mr. Wetherspoon's name when they said they still served. I ordered a massive meal, for it was on expenses, and ate in lonely silence in a massive student pub. I was so stuffed after my expenses-paid desert that I wabbled to the bus stop and took an expenses-paid bus back to the expenses-paid hotel to sleep for the interview.

In the morning I took an expenses-paid bus trip to the department and was shown around, being the only person being interviewed on the day. I met and chatted to lots of staff, and eventually met the other demonstrators. One of them, with a Brummy accent, told me the job was what I made it while the other two looked at me with great suspicion. This was also the case over my expenses-paid lunch in the staff room before my interview.

As you've no doubt guessed that interview went quite well. I do recall there being 6 people interviewing me, and that I had to tilt my head to weird angles depending on who was doing the questioning.

By 2:30pm I was doing my rounds of the shops, readying myself for the train ride home. I got a call offering me the job and asking if I wanted to return to the department. As I'd spent 5 hours there, and was now back in my jeans and t-shirt enjoying a Macdonalds I thought it best to make the excuse I was now awaiting my train back to Dundee. Thankfully the personnel person forgot I'd told her my train was at 5:30pm, so I was able to continue shopping for nothing much. I accepted the job though, and thus the story that is chronicled in this blog began...

With the usual vague lack of communication that is now standard working practice the department and I eventually worked out a start date of March 2005, giving me plenty of time to say goodbye to virtually everyone I knew, eat a lot of fine lunches, and celebrate my birthday in the company of people who actually knew me (birthday 2006 was quite duff by comparison).

And so this blog began...

Hello World

The obligatory test post on a blog detailing my wonderful adventures in Leicester.