This week in Gaming

Hi,

I'm currently running in two games. My Tuesday night D&D game (where I'm the Lizardman warrior-type) and the Wednesday night Dark Heresy game -- the Warhammer 40K RPG (where I'm one of a pair of Psykers).

So D&D. Everyone pretty much knows what's up with that. We kill things and take their stuff. Which is why I'm pretty sure our boss hates our guts. That's because he's sent us into the Fae realms with a burned out warmage to recover a long-lost group of soldiers. Our party is very large and mostly optimized for hitting things very hard so the subtleties of the Fae are going to be lost on us.

But we try to be good. So when the first of three tests arrives, we try and finesse our way around it. Only to trigger a big fight. We battle our way through and then our bear companion does the obvious thing, makes his FORT save and we're ready to move on. Can't win for losing.

In other news, apparently the PDFs for 4th ed. have been leaked and if you're a better pirate than I, you can get ahold of them. I console my anguished soul with reassurances that I'm a better person than these incorrigible thieves. So much better, in fact, that the only way they could tear me down would be to email me their ill-gotten gains, thus staining my soul with copyright infringement. Please, whatever you horrible pirate people do, don't make me complicit in your illicit activities. :)

For some reason I also really want to make a Paladin for 4th ed.

So that's D&D. Let's talk about Dark Heresy.

Dark Heresy builds off of the basic Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay system which means two things: a percentile based skill system and a sneering disdain for whatever modern advances in RPG design have come down the pike. Actually, I believe the system is somewhat streamlined over what it could've been, but once you see the critical result tables (one for each major hit location and damage type) you know you're playing it Old Skool(TM).

We upped the ante by generating characters by the book -- which means a total random roll for everything. We made two characters by random roll and then swapped around till we got something we liked. Character creation by random roll leads to some very interesting parties. It's also a hoot. I mean, it's Dark Heresy, none of us are terribly optimistic about our character's long-term survival chances -- and we start at first level where we couldn't even shoot ourselves in the head.

Who do we have?

* Me (Atellus) -- an Imperial Psyker who is totally the Emperor's favorite person in the whole universe and as soon as I cleanse the galaxy in his name, he can get out of that nasty life support system and we'll get gay married and go have the bestest honeymoon ever.

* Grim -- the Psyker who is quickly becoming known as "Lady of Pain".

* Mir -- Former member of a Saint Street Gang who is doing some "community service" for past crimes.

* Turin -- Tech-priest who wonders if you've let the Machine-God into your heart to replace that trembling piece of meat with a shiny robo-heart.

* Octus -- An Arbiter (think Judge Dread) who knows that this is the best time for a jackbooted fascist like himself to be alive.

* "Woolsey" -- He's our "leader". Actually, the real Woolsey got stabbed in the kidneys and this guy is impersonating him (in order to quickly leave the planet). Now he's hoping to live up to Woolsey's legendary (if vaguely defined) reputation to prevent being discovered. I'm sure the Inquisitor's vast resources will never penetrate his cunning disguise.

So we come up with these stumbling newbies who all get recruited to be an Inquisitor's agents and our very first encounter is a firefight with some cultists. I, the Psyker, have more success with my las pistol than my psychic powers (although Spasm is a great when it works). Grim turns on her aura fear and while it drives back some of the cultists our "fearless leader" is paralyzed with fright while being assaulted by a cultist. It's a long, drawn-out fight, but no one dies and we slowly manage to hack down the cultists.

The GM was running with a house rule that said any skills we used outside of combat would succeed even if our roll was a failure...there would just be consequences. So far, that hasn't bitten us on the butt yet, but it's a good house rule because (did I mention?) we're pretty pathetic at our skills.

The Inquisitor we work for is in charge of collecting heretical, chaos-tainted books in the sector and storing them. Not destroying them, storing them -- because the information is too valuable to destroy even if it will eat your soul. Imagine a Death Star full of Necronomicons -- that's where this guy lives. Fun times.

So we all sat down to dinner, had a nice talk and now we're off on our first real mission. We're going to pop round this Baron's house and ask him for a book in his collection. Should be a cakewalk.

So far, the game has been fun and if the system is nothing to write home about, it's mercifully simple. I do like how you roll percentiles to determine if you hit. If you do, reverse the numbers (so a roll of 25 that hits becomes a 52) and that determines where you hit the target (in this case, it's a body blow). I love systems that re-interpret one roll to provide more information. Lots of other games would've made you roll again to determine location and here it's all in one neat package. Also, the critical hit charts are fun (they always are), but I'm glad the GM has to manage them all. Bit of a pain on the other side of the screen I'd imagine.

later
Tom

This week in Gaming

Hi,

I'm currently running in two games. My Tuesday night D&D game (where I'm the Lizardman warrior-type) and the Wednesday night Dark Heresy game -- the Warhammer 40K RPG (where I'm one of a pair of Psykers).

So D&D. Everyone pretty much knows what's up with that. We kill things and take their stuff. Which is why I'm pretty sure our boss hates our guts. That's because he's sent us into the Fae realms with a burned out warmage to recover a long-lost group of soldiers. Our party is very large and mostly optimized for hitting things very hard so the subtleties of the Fae are going to be lost on us.

But we try to be good. So when the first of three tests arrives, we try and finesse our way around it. Only to trigger a big fight. We battle our way through and then our bear companion does the obvious thing, makes his FORT save and we're ready to move on. Can't win for losing.

In other news, apparently the PDFs for 4th ed. have been leaked and if you're a better pirate than I, you can get ahold of them. I console my anguished soul with reassurances that I'm a better person than these incorrigible thieves. So much better, in fact, that the only way they could tear me down would be to email me their ill-gotten gains, thus staining my soul with copyright infringement. Please, whatever you horrible pirate people do, don't make me complicit in your illicit activities. :)

For some reason I also really want to make a Paladin for 4th ed.

So that's D&D. Let's talk about Dark Heresy.

Dark Heresy builds off of the basic Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay system which means two things: a percentile based skill system and a sneering disdain for whatever modern advances in RPG design have come down the pike. Actually, I believe the system is somewhat streamlined over what it could've been, but once you see the critical result tables (one for each major hit location and damage type) you know you're playing it Old Skool(TM).

We upped the ante by generating characters by the book -- which means a total random roll for everything. We made two characters by random roll and then swapped around till we got something we liked. Character creation by random roll leads to some very interesting parties. It's also a hoot. I mean, it's Dark Heresy, none of us are terribly optimistic about our character's long-term survival chances -- and we start at first level where we couldn't even shoot ourselves in the head.

Who do we have?

* Me (Atellus) -- an Imperial Psyker who is totally the Emperor's favorite person in the whole universe and as soon as I cleanse the galaxy in his name, he can get out of that nasty life support system and we'll get gay married and go have the bestest honeymoon ever.

* Grim -- the Psyker who is quickly becoming known as "Lady of Pain".

* Mir -- Former member of a Saint Street Gang who is doing some "community service" for past crimes.

* Turin -- Tech-priest who wonders if you've let the Machine-God into your heart to replace that trembling piece of meat with a shiny robo-heart.

* Octus -- An Arbiter (think Judge Dread) who knows that this is the best time for a jackbooted fascist like himself to be alive.

* "Woolsey" -- He's our "leader". Actually, the real Woolsey got stabbed in the kidneys and this guy is impersonating him (in order to quickly leave the planet). Now he's hoping to live up to Woolsey's legendary (if vaguely defined) reputation to prevent being discovered. I'm sure the Inquisitor's vast resources will never penetrate his cunning disguise.

So we come up with these stumbling newbies who all get recruited to be an Inquisitor's agents and our very first encounter is a firefight with some cultists. I, the Psyker, have more success with my las pistol than my psychic powers (although Spasm is a great when it works). Grim turns on her aura fear and while it drives back some of the cultists our "fearless leader" is paralyzed with fright while being assaulted by a cultist. It's a long, drawn-out fight, but no one dies and we slowly manage to hack down the cultists.

The GM was running with a house rule that said any skills we used outside of combat would succeed even if our roll was a failure...there would just be consequences. So far, that hasn't bitten us on the butt yet, but it's a good house rule because (did I mention?) we're pretty pathetic at our skills.

The Inquisitor we work for is in charge of collecting heretical, chaos-tainted books in the sector and storing them. Not destroying them, storing them -- because the information is too valuable to destroy even if it will eat your soul. Imagine a Death Star full of Necronomicons -- that's where this guy lives. Fun times.

So we all sat down to dinner, had a nice talk and now we're off on our first real mission. We're going to pop round this Baron's house and ask him for a book in his collection. Should be a cakewalk.

So far, the game has been fun and if the system is nothing to write home about, it's mercifully simple. I do like how you roll percentiles to determine if you hit. If you do, reverse the numbers (so a roll of 25 that hits becomes a 52) and that determines where you hit the target (in this case, it's a body blow). I love systems that re-interpret one roll to provide more information. Lots of other games would've made you roll again to determine location and here it's all in one neat package. Also, the critical hit charts are fun (they always are), but I'm glad the GM has to manage them all. Bit of a pain on the other side of the screen I'd imagine.

later
Tom