Rogue Trader - first proper game, Episode 1,5

This is for the same group as the previous post, but it was a bit of downtime and sidemissions so I could prepare the next campaign.

It started out with "TO THE PUB"... to where the psyker got attacked by a zealot not-quite-witchhunter-yet and left the group.

There was a few instances of pickpocketing and the insane arch-militant got ahold of a Las-Cannon... uh-oh

They needed something to do, so they got in contacts with the adepus arbites on port wander and was tasked to clear out a storage area of criminal gangs. The arbites were understaffed and would come in and secure the area once they have dealt with the gang.

so, how they did this was something like this: "planning planning planning, about to sneak in...[insane arch-militant] 'I SHOOT AT THE WAREHOUSE!'"

The ones who were sneaking in almost died to friendly fire, the warehouse was set ablaze and civilian prisoners inside was burned alive by the fire without being rescued.... [insane arch-militant] "oops... oh-well".

a good amount of gangers made their way out on the opposite side and the tech-priest in the group (named crimson, same as the seneschal) got about 90% of the kills with his boltgun.

After making short work of the gangers.. the warehouse... and the civilians, the lost profit factor for the destruction of property on the port and was not in good standings with adeptus arbites.

They wrapped up the rest of their business and could not pry the las-cannon from the insane one, so he kept it... for now.

Rogue Trader - first proper game, Episode 1

This could be considered my first proper game, I had just moved to a new city and managed to get ahold of a new group to play with. So we rolled up some characters and got ready to play.

The group had from what I remember:

- a NPC lord captain by the name of Tristan
(later to become one of my favourite characters and has quite an insane amout of history, but at this time, he was just a NPC i made within a few seconds to fill a role)

- a Astropath (stayed for half a session)
- a Rogue Trader by the name of Stark
- a Female Seneschal by the name of Crimson
- a void-master
- a Navigator
- a Arch-militant (a quite insane one.. as we would learn)
- then another character which i forgot what was, maybe a tech-priest

The game starts out with Lord Captain telling the new officers that their first job is to transport a regiment of imperial guardsmen to a war-world, and help them out whereever they need some assistance, but leave the direct fighting to the IG.

with the exception of shenanigans, the trip was quite uneventful, at the war-world however, they transported tropps to the ground and scanned the world for activiy. Most of the civilian population have been sendt back to 2 cities to avoid the heaviest fighting against the ork invasion that the IG was fighting against.

The RT group figured they might pay the civilians a visit, but a sandstorm sent them crashin to the ground. They made their way to town, found a few guardsmen, sent them back to repair the dropship while they looked around town, however...

Both witnessing and the report from the guardsmen was that the town was empty, there was supposed to be filled with refugees, but there was none to be seen.

After having searched the entire town, only 1 location was left, it was the mines in the outskirts of the town.
There were proof of people there, but aside from a small ambull ambush, they saw nothing untill they reached a central chamber with the refugees, they were all messing around in the hall as a wave of people.

The insane arch-militant and the Crimson the seneschal waved in between them while the others tried to see if there was anything out of order.

While 2 PCs were in amongst these refugees, Stark the Rogue trader saw that one of the refugees had a third arm and were moving towards the 2 other PCs.... and came to the realisation that they were in the middle of a Genestealer infestated population.

Some burning, some exploding, some fatepoint-burning and some cave-ins later, they discovered that Tyranidds arrived in the solar system and is about to attack the planet. but they had time.

Between the orks and the tyranidds, the imperial guard had no chance. So the task at hand was to get the guardsmen off-world and let these two forces fight eachother, so that they could return later to mop up the victor.

The other city was not infestated, at least showed no proof of it, but the main focus was the IG HQ, taking control and making everyone retreat. easier said than done and it ended up with RT Stark taking control and making sure that everyone retreated, but at a 50% casualty against the orks. They escaped in time to avoid the tyranidds... but only just.

Retreating from the war-world and making their way back to port wander filled with a somber mood, and when they arrived, RT Stark was scorted away by high-ranking members of the Imperial Guard, not to be seen again for some time (player wanted to switch to a Tech-priest, so this is how he retreated his character)

Rogue Trader - Step-in-GM

There had been a long break between daemonata and my next game, I cannot remember if I had ran anything since, but there were something like 2 years break, during this time, I mostly played in a Rogue Trader game.

There was one game with the GM of that game, ran another one, locally at my place over the summer. We were a Arch-militant, a Navigator and a Void-master (me). We had another player who manage to be busy whenever the GM was available and available whenever the GM was busy, so I was allowed to run side missions.

I believe that I ran 2 but can only remember 1 of them.

They were tasked with finding an artifact on a planet, there were 3 likely temples where they could be found, and they formed a Tri-force, the artifact was located to the south-west but the others investigated the other locations.

One contained Eldars (dont remember this part), one contained Orks, they landed with a flyer on top of the temple and fired on the orks that approached from the bottom of the temple.

Last temple was where they found the artifact, an eldar was there and told them to leave, they managed to strike a deal and leave, but as they left, the eldar screamed in pain, and they returned to find him dead with the artifact in his hands.

they grabbed the artifact by wrapping it in cloth and brought it with them, returning to port wander in order to sell it or make use of it.

... I dont remember what the last player played, maybe a tech-priest, and my voidmaster were not in this mission.

Demonata - My second game

My second game used the rules for World of Darkness, using both Mage and Werewolf in the same game, but with a setting twist, turning it into the world of Demonata. Characters starts out as regular nWoD characters without any of the templates.

I was going to make a introduction for 1 character so I had a concept, but another player jumped in at the start so I did not get a proper introduction for him (I regret this).

The game starts with 1 character waking up in his bed as a kid, his house is on fire, and the door to his room is open.

He grabs Lord Henry McSnugglepuff the 4th, his hamster, and navigate the flames to get down to the ground floor, where he could exit the kitchen window.

Outside, several men were waiting, but not expecting him to exit the window, so they started chasing him, chasing him a few blocks, to a factory, here they grabbed him as he was doubling over in pain and everything went black... he just remember som screams.

He woke up at the other end of town, covered in blood and rags, with a man standing over him.
This was a professor who knew what had happened to him, if he would work as the prossor's assistant, he would be taught how to take control... over what?.. his turning to a werewolf.

Wolfie was not the only one working for the professor, there was another kid working for him also, and they were both taught a lot of different things, much relating to the supernatural but no spesifics or how to counteract them, just knowledge about ancient lore and legends and how they were dealt with in the past.

When they grew up, they both became professors in their own rights, and did some sidework as occult investigators.

during one of their investigations, they found a strange artifact on the body of a cultist of sort that tried to attack them, doing research on the cultist and the artifact lead them to an outlying farm as a location where events had happened in the past, some resent, some in the distant past.

When they arrived, it felt deserted, there was no light or sign of people there, spooky.

When professor wolf and the other one got up to the barn, some kind of shockwave was emitted from it... it had no impact on professor wolf but it did on the other professor, it sent him flying backwards, and when he got up, arcane energy seemed to be crackling around him.

they opened the barn to see what was there, and they found a giant scorpion with a snake for a tail... it was fight-time.

The fight had some details but to cut it short, they defeated it, however, one problem during the fight caused Professor mage to leave and professor wolf to not want to play solo.

what happened was that the wolfie spent some time choosing what to do, so i let the mage prepare his action, he rolled to his the snake-head with an arcane infused piece of nailed plank, to which he succeeded, but the attack could not be carried out untill wolfie had finished his.

So wolfie did his thing and caused the snake-head to be out of reach, so i asked the mage if he wanted to reroll (apparently he did not hear this, dont know why, maybe distracted), he said no and the hit location then would be one of the heavily carapaced pincers of the scorpion, negating his attack...

Professor mage left because of this, his attack was for the snake head, not anything else, so there was a ragequit and the game collapsed shortly after, before we even got to the part where more people could join (we did not even find anyone anyway).

improvised system: My first game

My first attempt at any game, was a game I ran on Google wave and used an improvised system. It was a 1d20 where the better you rolled, the better you performed, 10 was the average and below it would be various degrees of failure.

There were no stats in the game, but depending on what the players did, they gained a +1 (could stack) to a skill or a task which could be anything.

So the game that I ran... it started out with 1 player in a tavern getting up from his Chair, shouts "I WANNA BE A PIRATE!" and runs out the door. He brushes into a few thugs who are intent on starting a fight, but the wannabe-pirate quickly subdue their leader, put him on his shoulder and runs away with him. he keeps on running until he gets to the high-point of town, overlooking the pier. Here he sets the thug leader down and says "you are now working for me"... the leader will have none of this, draws a knife and charges at the wannabe-pirate.

A quick sidestep, a fall off the high-point, an impalement on a sign that says Vlad's merchandices -later, the wannabe pirate finds himself surrounded by the thugs and again says "you are now working for me"... in which they agree. 

Now.. to get a ship

There were plenty in the harbor, so getting onboard by knocking guards into the water and overpowering the crewmen with his new gang was little challange, but the ship was already leaving the town before he got in control. 

By following the intended destination, the wannabe-pirate reached a pirate's hideout and had to do some sneaking around there.

This is where I dont remember what more happened to the wannabe-pirate... it was so long ago... I do remember him having a rap battle with another player so I assume he got back safely...

The second character also started out in the tavern, but he was a investigating watchman, doing his rounds. He heard some commotion about a death on the pier, a man being impaled on a sigh that said Vlad's merchandices. It was investigation time... which failed horrible and all trails ended when the one responsible had left the town by a stolen ship along with a band of thugs, he was not paid for this shit... better pick up the paycheck at the mayor's place.

this is where that player disappeared off the face of the earth, did not get in contact with him again about the game untill google wave was said to close down (like 2 years before it acually did).

Second to last player I think was some sort of thief, Don't remember how this one started out but he went to see of something could be taken from a warehouse by the piers, near a murder scene and found some guards outside. A mysterious man showed up and offered to help take out the guards. So a quick pistol shot by the mysterious man and some rapiere fencing later, the guards were taken out and the warehouse door was open. Inside was a lot of people, looking hostile... if a bit high on something, they picked up the swords and were ready to attack... to which the Thief-duelist responded "DONT TOUCH THE SWORDS, THEY ARE SPIDERS"... panic ensued amongst the people inside.

After it was cleared out, the thief grabbed things of value and left.

The last player was a mysterious man with a bowler hat. He started out having a rap battle with a pirate and went to see if anything interessting happened. He found someone trying to get into a warehouse so he helped him out. After dealing with the people inside, he found some drugs to which he took. When he used the drugs, he saw that some things turned into a bright shade of blue. and when he interacted with that, it fell apart. He was hunting some sort of rumor and investigated a few houses....

but here the game stopped due to google wave shutting down. (2 years before it actually did)

Lack of updates: Brain mush

I've lately struggled with my productiveness, it often seems like im dizzy or sleepy, and cannot get anything productive done. Have done some research in trying to figure out what can be the reason and I believe that it is the lack of something rather than something I should visit the doctor for.

Started drinking a lot more water and it has improved a bit but it might just take some time to adjust back to normal. Sleep is not a problem but food might be, that is to say that I do eat food but I cant be bothered to think about what, if im hungry, I'll eat the first thing I deem eatable.

So hopefully I can get back on track soon.

As for the GM guides I'm writing, I completely lost track of that due to this problem, so I figured I might as well start a new project which is about writing about the previous games I've ran, starting from the beginning of the ones I remember, to the ones im currently running, then maybe a bit back and forth for games that I've forgotten or just been a player in.

GM Tutorial: Player group

GM Tutorial: Player group

There are many type of players, and unless the GM knows what the players are going to play before he plans his campaign, he would have to account for a rough version of all the types of characters the players are going to be.

There are a lot of types described online and how they would solve things, a few examples is Mary Sue, the ultra violent, the non-combatant, and the tactician. What is common with these types is that the players know what they want to play, unless it happens to be by accident by inexperienced players.

These types need to be accounted for when planning campaigns, if you got a ultra violent character in the group, then he would like some combat, or else he will not have much to do. If you got a non-combatant, its the opposite, you want to give him plenty of oppertunities to do stuff outside of combat. If you have a tactician, then its all about laying plans, or giving information so the player can develop their own plans.

If you have a Mary Sue on your hands, then you have a problem... noone expect the player likes this jack-of-all-trades, master of everything, that is a mixed race with all the bonuses but no penalties and a background story that is drawn straight out of a otaku's fanfic.

What I mean by this post is to plan for what type of character the players want to play and make sure to create content that fits their character.