Tuesday, July 19, 2005

Diplomacy segues into Warhammer

I don't know if any of you are Diplomacy players or not, but if you are...

...an acquaintence of mine is heading off to law school at the beginning of August. He owns Diplomacy, but has never played, because it requires people willing to give up several hours to play.

We'll be playing on July 29th, which I'm pretty sure is a Friday. If the 29th is in fact not a Friday, we're playing on the Friday closest to July 29th. Probably starting about 6 pm.

If you both want to play and are able to play on that particular evening, let me know, otherwise, go on with your lives as if nothing has happened.

To my second point, I plan on running Warhammer Real Soon Now(tm). I have a few questions for you...

A) Those of you who have the book (which may be all of you) - have you read the intro adventure in the back? It leads pretty well into the Paths of the Damned stuff, so I'd like to use that to start. However, if anyone has gone through it, I could whip something else up instead to lead you down the path to grim and perilous adventure.

B) The Plundered Vaults book has some short one-offs, which I will probably use at some point. Three of them are reprinted from WFRP v1. Two of them appeared in White Dwarf, while one comes straight from The Restless Dead. I'm not sure what you ran in the past, Shawn, so if any of this rings a bell, let me know.

C) Are you all interested in rolling your characters up completely randomly, or making characters with a starting career and character concept already in mind? Me myself, I prefer to do it completely randomly, but not so much that I'd refuse the other method.

I think that's it. Hopefully. For now.

10 comments:

Womachka said...

I have not read the adventure in the back. I figured someone might want to run it in their round so I kept it a mystery.

I should be able to make it for Diplomacy on the 29th unless Shawn nees my help moving that evening which may be possible.

As for Warhammer I will be happy to play anything but a halfling Druid. As this combo does not exist in the rules (I think now for good reason)it should not be a problem. In Shawnthulu Hammer we got a bonus advance for going completely Random VS picking a career & race. That way if your stuck with something nasty your out 100xp quicker.
Do all the careers fit into the senario you had in mind? Are their VETO classes?

Your RHS said...

Personally, I don't care what you play. I'm assuming a magic using character would be useful for the second part of the adventure, since it involves intrigue in the Colleges of Magic in Altdorf, but as it hasn't been published yet, I can't actually say. The first part doesn't seem to require anything specific character-wise.

I had toyed with the idea of giving anyone who rolled their career randomly a bonus 100 XP for the same reasons as cited in Shawnhammer. I haven't decided one way or the other.

I can safely say, however, that no one will be playing a Halfing Druid...

Boze said...

Well, I did read the adventure in the book, but I can honestly say I remember very little about it, having just kind of skimmed it. I remember something about a bridge and some mutants, that's about it. As far as rolling vs. choosing, I could probably be happy either way although the other night I did think of a kind of cool character that I might want to try if it works. I'll tell ya about it and see what you think.

Locnar said...

I didn't read the adventure in the back, haven't read any of the others, not sure if Shawn ran them.

I'd be fine with rolling randomly. I think it's more a problem for the GM making the random characters work, but I like rolling mine just fine.

Boze said...

Well, in part the idea I had for a character would help hang together some or all of the group if we tried to design our group purposefully. I was thinking of playing a wealthy Tilean merchant prince who just lost most of his merchandise and cash in the big war. Other PC's could be part of his retinue that along with him got away with their lives when the wagon train was attacked. In particular if anyone wanted to play an Estalian Diestro and/or a Valet, but there are a large number of careers which could reasonably have been with his convoy for one reason or another, even some who may have been simple passengers.

Locnar said...

Like Dwarven muleskinners? :)

Boze said...

After reading the rules on running a business, I kind of soured on the idea of playing a merchant. I thought maybe there would be better trade rules, maybe allowing us to do something along the lines of 50 Fathoms only overland, but the rules are kind of incomplete and niggardly when it comes to that sort of thing. The concept I had in mind would depend on my character being able to hire henchmen, but it's more lucrative to BE a henchman than to run a business. Oh well, maybe it wasn't a good idea anyway, Warhammer tends to leave little extra room for "building" as it were. So I looked at some other ideas instead, now I'm thinking about playing an archer type character, since in the new rules it's actually a viable character type. The new talents allow someone to be nearly as effective at range as others can be at HTH, which was absolutely not the case in the old rules. So, maybe that might be fun. Or perhaps an outlaw highwayman type, or an engineer...actually there are a ton of cool archetypes available. Perhaps I'll see what group holes need to be filled. Is it Tim's turn to be the wizard? :) It must be him or Nigel, although I suspect Nigel would dislike being a Warhammer mage.

Locnar said...

I have no problem being a wizard or cleric, but I also have no problem taking what fate gives me. I have the character pack BTW, and there's no reason for anyone else to buy it. It mostly has character sheets, and anything else in it is easily shared. I does have expanded background tables for names and birthplaces and such.

Boze said...

Well, when it comes to building a party I'm a bit leery of just random rolling...I feel that in nearly every game there are certain archetypal roles that ensure a more sucessful adventure. This may be just my opinion, but it seems to me that every group needs some variant of a fighter, a sneak, a medic, a mystic, and a leader type. These are mixable and matchable in some ways, but it helps to spread them out because that way every character is useful in some situation. If we roll randomly we will likely be missing some key skills that will make it much more difficult for us. Matt told me that after playtesting the adventure he definitely thinks a thief/rogue type is a necessity, for instance. And it being Warhammer, we'd better have someone with some healing ability. A wizard would be cool, but a cleric could fill that need too (I particularly like the Verena spells...they kinda kick butt).

Basically, the sort of general skill sets I thought we might be in need of are:

HTH Fighter
Ranged Fighter
Rogue
Magic-User
Healer

Now, one could fill a couple needs by being an initiate of Shallya, for instance, or an initiate of Ranald. But if we all roll randomly we could end up with a bone-picker, a burgher, a servant, and a jailer. Which would leave a whole host of needed skills unavailable to us as a group. If someone really wants to roll randomly that's cool, but some of us should choose after the randomers have rolled.

Locnar said...

There's also a middle ground. You could roll two or three careers and pick from there.