Saturday, March 22, 2014

Patrons for WHFRP

Patrons, those social anchors and quest givers for the wandeeing murder-hobos we call player characters.

From nudging players into action via quests, or rewarding success, to providing the social context for why killing that bad guy doesn't get the town guard after you but shaking down the bigger kid does, patrons should be a big part of fantasy game. A society even remotely based on a medieval world view wouldn't allow for most of the shenanigans that PCs get into without a powerful patron to give political sanction to those random bouts of physical violence and the liberal misappropriation of monies players are prone to.

So what does that mean in a game? Well first off the Patron should color the group, be it political views or fantasy religious habits.
This is a big deal because its a way to guide the party template. If you don't know what the party template is you really owe it to yourself to check out Fear the Boot. Go listen here

In a nut shell its the logic behind why a group of player characters would risk their lives with other nutcases while going out and risking their collective necks. So rather than pretending there's a floating invisible mark over the heads of just some people which means they're somehow trustworthy,  you instead create an artifact that explains why people are together.

This is where the patron comes in. In WHFRP game I'm planning the characters will be defined by which patron they all decide to serve. This will also decide what plots I focus on developing further.

For example, picking a patron that is a member of the religious hierarchy of a major faith, like the cult of Sigmar in WHFRP,  would give a party a fairly significant inroad with the faithful, access to at least some level of political shielding,  access to some significant finances and hopefully some access to magical healing beyond the norm. However on the other hand they'll be expected to act to further the plans of the church, be it cleaning up awkward messes or recovering relics from dangerous locations. The focus needs to be on opening up new venues for the players, rather than limiting options

Sunday, March 16, 2014

Combat in WFRP

To quote Wikipedia
"Combat in Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay descends from the system used for large-scale miniature combat, making it substantially more deadly than the combat featured in many other systems. Most human-level creatures and characters can absorb only one or two hits without receiving a serious injury, a "Critical Hit" that may instantly kill, cripple, or permanently maim a character. There are no regeneration or resurrection powers in WFRP and limited healing options. "Fate Points", which represent a character's fate or destiny, provide a limited number of opportunities to avoid crippling or killing results."

"It's like Terry Pratchett writing the 30 Years War, only darker.
Hmm. It's the game where you start out thinking you're playing D&D, only to discover you are in fact playing Call of Cthulhu." - Professor Phobos

Looking over the Core Rules this will be a very interesting (in the Chinese sense) game to run. Its going to be like Call of Cthulhu in some senses and unforgiving to those who mistake it for D&D. My initial idea of running a campaign about the invasion of Lustria may have to wait, as I have not been able to find enough material to create profiles for Lizardmen, as I just dont know the system that well to make this amount of material up.

This leads me back to an old world located game. This may actually make it easier on me as I have quite a bit of material to draw on so stats are not an issue. Rooting out horrors and dangers in the creaking hulk of the empire, fun times.

Friday, March 14, 2014

Ph'tagn!! The rebirth of the blog.

The essential salts were the proper sort it seems, as I've managed to reconstitute the blog after a year plus long hiatus.

After the debacle of the experiment in running a planned module in SWN and a long break as just a player to recover I'm back DMing.

So the preparation to run Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, 2nd edition starts.

More posts coming soon