Jump to content

Dave Allen

Members
 View Profile  See their activity

  • Content Count

    70

  • Joined

  • Last visited

Posts posted by Dave Allen

  2. Posted

    jlok said:

    Thank you for the advice Dave. I have been playing different roleplaying games for a long time, but I am just now starting to try to DM/GM. This adventure really has me excited about it. I think becoming a DM requires a difficult change in perspective, and I think your advice really pointed that out to me. So thanks again. I really apreciate it.

    You're welcome.

    Another thing I think is useful is if the players foil the plot with ease, just save the bits they managed to avoid for later on.

    That way they get the feeling of acheivement - whilst you get to employ some of the gaming material/ideas you prepped 'for free' at a later date.

    So let's say they ace their investigation and neutralise the daemon and cultists with little effort and rally the remaining manor staff against the beastmen. That's good on them but a bit of shame because you didn't get to employ some of the cooler/scarier stuff in the game.

    Well maybe then the next time the characters are in town, on a night when Morrslieb is full, another cult engineer a similar summoning, and this time there's much less time to prevent it.

    Also bear in mind that most of the cultists are interested in self-preservation. As some other people have mentioned, if the investigation goes too well some members of the cult might seek to escape rather than fight the party. This leaves some enemies out there who might seek revenge against the party at a later date - or summon the daemon in some other fashion.

  3. Posted

    simpatikool said:

    Dinner has been served, the players are drugged. Its gonna be dodgey now.

    I can't help but feel that I have not done the best job in assisting the players with realizing their abilities, options etc. Time will tell. Despite that, my player group is extremely excited over the game, their characters, and all that.

    Looking forward to more cool adventires from FFG.

    I wouldn't be tloo critical of your performance unless there's clearly something you feel you haven't done - I think if you've used the progress tracker you've been more than fair. I'm not sure what your players are like - but I suppose if I had a group who hadn't done much investigative play before I'd warn them to look for clues at te start - I don't know if that might have helped in your case.

    It might be worth, if you think things could get really ugly, delaying the ritual by a night - perhaps the cloud cover prevents Morrslieb from shining brightly or something - you could then have the players wake up late the next day - feeling very groggy - but with a few more hours to figure out what is going on.

    Alternatively - if they're a rather combat-orientated group - just hit them with everything and see how it goes.

  4. Posted

    I can empathise that the failure of the cult can seem anti-climatical. However I think that if you don't 'reward' the players by allowing a skillful investigation to mitigate the worst of the cult activity then you do risk having them feel cheated.

    If the party is geared for combat perhaps you could set a contingency whereby the beastman assault at the end is made more powerful if the investigation declaws the cult without much of a fight.

    That way you can still "go out with a bang" whilst being able to tell the players that their skillful detective work prevented a much worse danger.

     

    Happy new year!

  5. Posted

    Sinister said:

    Just finished with this adventure.

    I liked it overall.  Gregor Peirsson died to fatigue in my game while attacking, which was enjoyable by all.

    What a way to go!

    One thing was the heroes found the temple way too early in the adventure, sneaking into the wine cellar and finding the temple.  At that point I had 1/2 the cultists attack and then made it look like everyone was deeply shocked so the PCs felt they "got" most of the cultists, while resting later in the night, all hell broke loose.

    Sounds cool - that's the sort of complication I hope the adventure allows for.

  6. Posted

    Vilrandir said:

    Well, you see, you've pretty much beat every expectation I had on the "Eye for an Eye" story. As mentioned above, a lot of detail is given and still, a lot of  "wiggle room" is left for every GM to tweak it to his liking. Moreover, it gave me a very good idea on how to write stories for Warhammer Roleplay.

    Thanks - I take that as very high praise and, once again, it was something we had in mind (for it to cover the situation comprehensively but to leave plenty of room for complications) so it's especially pleasing to see that that came through.

  9. Posted

    How about having the two magic users engaged in corrospondence? The dwarf could be seeking advice from Sulring vis a vis improving the necromantic "resurrection" of his dead love.

    or...

    Sulring could be quizzing the dwarf on the location and power of some magical artefact that he had once come across.

    Or both.

    Given that the temple in the Beast Child is the site of some unusual undead phenomena, and might plausably house a magic item or two perhaps it has come up in conversation between the two magic users. (As it happens there aren't really any poweful magical items in the temple, though you could place one there if you felt like it - even if you don't the magic item might have been looted by previous visitors - or just be a rumour that turned out to be false).

    Perhaps such correspondence could have even been intercepted by agents of the Tsar, who might pass it on to the players in order to give them some insight into the powers they might face.

     

  11. Posted

    I like Jan Svankmajer stuff and his Faust should be on everyone's "to watch" list (not just because Warhammer plays with a lot of Faustian themes but because it is excellent and a genuinely creepy film).

    I know a lot of Warhammer developers in the past have rated Terry Gilliam, particularly Jabberwocky with it's isolated walled cities, corrupt nobles, thuggish knights and dirty ignorant peasants.

    Oh, and massive mutant monsters in the woods.

  12. Posted

    Boris Hochloff said:

    Cool, Dave. Glad you got to read some feedback. Also glad it was positive!

    Yes, thanks again, it really is appreciated.

    Boris Hochloff said:

    What's this mean to someone about to run this?  Well, hard to say.  For now it looks like if your party does not contain very, very experienced roleplayers/gamers, and you don't have a couple 5 INT, Observation Trained characters, the mystery should pose a good challenge for them.  The combat results look like they will vary greatly, as these two groups with similar combat capabilities had very different results with the first beastmen encounter.

    I did set out to try and create a scenario that would reward investigative style play by having the investigation mitigate some of the danger, whilst parties made of combat hungry warrior types could forego the investigation and have a few fights without too much trouble. However I do think that the party will soon perish if they simply try to take on all opponents set against them unaided and unprepared - I don't think it'd represent Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay properly if it didn't.

    However, if the party are risking taking a lambs to the slaughter approach I would probably press one or two of the more helpful NPCs into providing a nudge or two. I sometimes think inexperienced roleplayers can be surprised to find that talking to NPCs can actually help matters.

  13. Posted

    It's great to hear you liked it. I did some of the development of the adventure so it's nice to know it works as planned (give or take depending on the sort of group that undertakes the task, of course).

    I wanted the manor sort of close to a village that had already been placed in the Reikland - so that WFRP old timers could plonk the location into their campaign world, but it shouldn't be too difficult to rationalise a day's journey to the manor. Just have the external threat (as you have nicely euphemised) knock down some trees that have to be cleared from the path (and this undertaking can be the signal that sends a scout running for the rest - perhaps).

    Or perhaps a storm heading in a WSW direction could drench the track and make the journey very difficult.

  15. Posted

    monkeylite said:

     

    We tried to get him to help out, but Clem said he was sticking with 1st ed. I think he's a bit of a grognard, to be honest.

     

     

    I thought he said that - after being scorched by a fireball, poisoned and dumped in a sewer, thrown into the sea with a large anchor round his neck and subjected to at least two defenestrations - he wasn't interested in demonstrating rules anymore.

    Frankly I thought he was in technical breach of his NDA.

  17. Posted

    I've got a bit of a soft spot for RPG Pundit, as I thought his remarks about WFRP in the past have been generally supportive and his blog's pretty entertaining for what it is (ie - daily article writing, especially on a niche subject, means you are going to produce rubbish now and then so I think it's impressive that he produces interesting, funny and informative posts with the degree of regularity he achieves).

    I don't agree with him on many things, I don't agree with him about WFRP3, but when he's on the ball he produces some top-notch potty-mouthed hyperbole.

    My experience of RPG preorders is that they are invariably "very soft" - as distributors simply don't trust them to shift. They typically make very cautious orders, see how they do for a bit, then order with more enthusiasm. So this sort of news doesn't surprise me but doesn't demoralise me either. The rest seems context-free rumours of vague qualms reported by an anonymous source ... I wager it was a slow news day in Montevideo.

  19. Posted

    Varnias Tybalt said:

    Cynical Cat said:

     

    I'm sure piracy is helping to put the hurt on RPGs and the crappy economy is only making things worse.

     

     

    No, piracy is hardly the issue. There is yes to be presented any substantiated proof that piracy harms any given market. So far, the only "proof" the world has seen are mere speculative bull from record companies. The only reason why these companies and lobby groups whine and ***** so much about piracy, is because piracy offers a chance to review material (movies, books, music etc.) without actually buying it. Meaning that they can't "chance-sell" the same kind of crap that they tried to fool people into paying for before.

    The sooner these useless middle-hand companies die out from economic starvation, the better. demonio.gif

    I know that EMI UK had to make 500 members of staff redundant not too long ago because of the damage freely available online music had done to the sale of music that came on media in boxes. Now I know we can all laugh at those people losing their livelihoods - haha! but it does seem to be a more tangible proof of the impact of pirated product on the music industry than mere "speculative bull".
×
×
  • Create New...