Wednesday 30 January 2008

Struggling in the name of the God-Emperor

I've never played any Warhammer wargame, nor did I play the old Warhammer Fantasy RPG (our group usually played D&D and MERP when we wanted a fantasy game in those days). I do have two rather nice Citadel miniature packs from way back when, the Adventurers Starter Pack and the Monsters Starter Pack, that I bought around the time me and my brother got the Red Box of D&D... so it must have been in 1988. But that was the extent of my Warhammer-related history before the relaunch of the roleplaying game a couple years ago by Black Industries. I still haven't played it because a friend of mine keeps slipping out of his promise to run it, but I did buy the core rulebook and think it's a very well written and designed product.

Which leads me to the game I wanted to say a few words about, the brand new Warhammer 40,000 Dark Heresy RPG. The publisher sold out the entire first printing (20,000 copies as far as I know) on preorders alone, which is rather remarkable for any RPG that isn't D&D. Less than a week after this announcement, we were told that Black Industries would cease all production of this and other game lines later this year. This, to put it plainly, sucks.

I had gotten interested in the game because the fantasy version was such a strong book. I called and reserved the very last copy from the local gaming store - only to hear that they had accidentally sold it to someone else. Needless to say, I was not amused after limping there on crutches (I busted my ankle two weeks back, thankfully it has almost healed now). They did promise to ask all the other chain stores if they had any copies left. While I waited I heard the news about the cancellation. Today I got word that a copy had been located and picked it up with mixed feelings. Originally there were going to be three core books: Dark Heresy, which is about the Inquisitors, a second one about Rogue Traders, and a final one about the Adeptus Astartes Deathwatch. Now we would only get the first game and the three supplements that BI has promised to release regardless of the cancellation.

After leafing through the book and reading the first two chapters, I feel sorry for the creative team behind the game. It is a beautiful, well written tome. It must be galling to labor to release such a fine book and have it sell extremely well, only to have the carpet yanked from under your feet by the parent company. It kind of reminds me of dying in the service of the Emperor's Inquisition on some nameless alien planet, having never received nor asked for recognition or reward...

(We also played Ptolus this week.)

Game Count: 7/52

Sunday 27 January 2008

The counter keeps ticking

Just a quick posting now, lest I forget this week's achievements: we continued the D&D Ptolus campaign and finished Shadowlords module 3 in NWN. I'm ahead of schedule!

Game Count: 6/52

Saturday 19 January 2008

Circus freaks and Scotch whisky

This week we got the Buffy campaign under way and continued the 1920s Cthulhu.

It was decided to change Buffy's location from New Orleans to Arkham, as Cthulhoid elements were slated to appear anyway, and we felt that a fictional small town would perhaps fit the game better than a large existing one. The starting date was 16 January 2008, the same as that of the game session, and the opening scene was set at Arkham High where every character was sitting in the English class. What follows is just a list of randomly selected events, as a blow-by-blow account belongs elsewhere.

A circus was in town and Selena Flores' (she's the slayer) watcher told her to investigate it as some star conjunctions indicated that something evil would happen in that park within days. She seemed to be more worried about missing cheerleader practice.

Will managed to inadvertently anger Elianor on the very first day (he's not very good at reading's ladies' intentions between the lines) but luckily they made up the day after. He was even invited for a dinner at her home before they went to see the circus. A nerve-wracking event for the young man, to be sure. Matthieu, Elianor's father had earlier visited the bookstore which Selena's watcher owned. Meanwhile, Vin had learned that one of his teammates was missing...

The circus opening night saw everyone but Vin in attendance; he was hanging out in the park, drinking beer (shocking, I know) with his buddies. Elianor experienced a psychic vision and worried Will in the process. She tried to investigate the main tent with Selena after the show, but they were chased off by circus workers. After Will drove Elianor home, she told her father - who is also a sorcerer, by the way - about her vision and they began a ritual to try and find out more about the park. It indicated that magical forces were converging on the location! Her dad grabbed a sword and left to investigate, telling Elianor to stay out of it.

She called Will immediately and asked for a ride to the circus. What, you thought we actually obeyed? Will was clueless but snuck out of the house anyway and drove to meet his girlfriend. While these events unfolded, Selena was again investigating the circus and ran smack into what looked like a ritual sacrifice of the missing student. She called her watcher for help and then went on the attack. Soon the main tent was really busy with magical clowns, the circus director, his female companion, the slayer, her watcher, Elianor, her father and poor Will all embroiled in a fight.

We won. The big boss got away. The student was saved. Will accidentally decapitated the mysterious woman with the watcher's sword. He really didn't mean to. Selena kicked ass and got hers kicked a little. Elianor used a crossbow instead of magicks. Vin? He scored on an entirely another front. As Will and Elianor drove the rescued guy to the hospital, they got into a meaningful discussion of the nature of courage and mysterious visions, each discovering that the other had also experienced them! The rest of the gang cleaned up at the scene and interrogated a weird height-challenged person. Cue credits.

Back in the 1920s, the team, reinforced by a friend of the deceased Thomas, traveled to Scotland to look for a missing big game hunter at the request of his nephew. No Prohibition, yay! We found the missing man's corpse and a piece of an artifact we'd only seen in a picture before. A ghost tried to eat Jack while Roy was happily cooking dinner in the next room. Sam picked a lock with a supposedly magical toothpick. We did not blow anyone's head off and were friends with the local police. Must be that genteel British air.

Game Count: 4/52

Monday 7 January 2008

Deck of Many Games

My New Year's promise to myself was to try and have some roleplaying activity once a week, every week, in 2008. I'm allowing myself two things to make it remotely possible:
  • As long as the number of games is 52 when the year ends, it doesn't matter if there have been two games on a given week and none on the following week, for example.
  • MMORPGs do not count. But Neverwinter Nights multiplayer games do (see the previous post for more on that).
The second week of the year started less than one hour ago, and so far I've ran Delta Green once and played NWN once. We're hoping to continue Delta Green already this week and 1920s Cthulhu is scheduled for the next. So, thus far it looks promising. But I have no doubt that there will be bumps on the road later on.

It's a nice dream.

Game Count: 2/52

Sunday 6 January 2008

Winter nights in Neverwinter

A little before Christmas I started to play Neverwinter Nights online with two of my friends: my 1920s Cthulhu Keeper and a fellow player. Everyone bought (well, I already had) the game and both expansions, and then we went to Neverwinter Vault in search of a suitable multiplayer module. We ended up choosing Adam Miller's massive campaign consisting of Shadowlords (5 parts), Dreamcatcher (4 parts) and finally Demon (a single module), as it came highly recommended in the Hall of Fame. It was particularly nice that the creator had made it available as a single .exe file - no need to mess around with haks and video files.

I have attempted to play NWN with some other friends in the past. It was fun, but some technological problems always came up. Either the game was unstable for someone or the network connections lagged. Apparently some performance hurdle has now been crossed, as you can turn the settings to eleven and everything still runs smoothly. NWN is not a new game, but quite pretty enough for me with maximum settings.

We have three long sessions behind us now and it's been even more fun than I expected. Our cleric-rogue-sorcerer team has been quite effective and the modules are not in the Hall of Fame by accident. We've already discussed what we could play next when Demon is concluded some months into the future. ;)

Here's to Celdor Willenden and Teira - long may they run!