The consensus is... do it. I'm "talking" to a couple of people about content, format, &tc.
More importantly, I'm talking to my players about another session! Damn, more than 6 weeks since the last session.
Babies and families do take precedent. No faults there.
Let's play!
Anybody think there is a need for a U.S. based Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay podcast?
I'm mulling the idea over as I expand my campaign wiki. With all the whining on other podcasts about GW and general ignoring of WFRP in the podcast space (if I hear Luke Meyer plug Savage Worlds one more time I'll puke), me thinks there is a niche to fill.
Thoughts. I would need a co-host though.
As I prepare to start my WFRP campaign again, I've been recruiting Evil Overlords.
Wow! I could not have gotten a better group! A couple of slots are still open, but because I believe there is a cyberstalker in my group, I'll keep "undercover" the exact details. Finding Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay players was key though. I'm very impressed with the submissions to date. There are world mechanics in play that might have wars starting... the PCs won't stop anything. All PCs do is fuck up well laid plans of the GM... ;)
Of course I'm just kidding. It's fun to poke the PCs with sticks. Sharp swords, curses, and disease are good too.
Not familiar with the Evil Overlord faction system? Check out the seed idea at You Meet In A Tavern!
James Maliszewski's Grognardia is a fantastic blog to read about role playing games, the history of the hobby, and the old school revolution. But what's great about his recent post, The Shoulders of Giants is how it reflects on Avalon Hill and AH's indirect influence on the RPG hobby, as well as how it influenced him.
I know I was greatly influenced by AH and I miss the games of AH terribly (you'll understand in a moment just how much). My father introduced me to board wargaming with Tactics and Panzer Leader. And as senior, VietNam and Gulf war seasoned DOD logistician, handed me my ass more times I wish to admit too. I played both those titles for more than a decade, through college (a military one!) and have owned at least two copies of Squad Leader.
Today, I'm an "game master" and enjoy the role-in-role-playing games more than the game part, but have a well grounded grognard's respect for game mechanics because of Avalon Hill.
James traces the history of Avalon Hill well. James mentions AH licensees, and rightfully cites that "most [of Avalon Hill's titles] are in the vault somewhere, unlikely ever to see the light of day again," he does not mention by name Multi Man Publishing. MMP licenses the rights to Advanced Squad Leader and publishes new rules and scenarios, as well as, promoting the game and the hobby of wargaming around the world. MMP is also releasing an updated version Panzerblitz (which I wrote about here)! I'm such a fan of Panzer Leader I built my own copy!
And for those that want to get more grognard geek on than they can handle, visit The Hundred Years War and read the definitive book on wargaming, The Complete Wargames Handbook, by James F. Dunnigan, designer for Avalon Hill and SPI.
The problems with buttons and column headers leaking through the z-indexes in IE 7 and IE 6 are corrected. Finally.
Many apologies for the delay. Busy would not properly define my state of affairs. The orbits of the many things going on around me is entertaining on levels undefined, but to those that follow ACD, most damaging to this blog. And to the WFRP game I have been running.
The party has not meet for 4 weeks. Aside from my state of affairs, a key player just had a baby boy: Rutger Harrison... a great name BTW! His teenage son was a player too, so the party was down two PCs.
And thus play is on haitus.
I carved out some time to improve the Inns of the Empire tool. Some minor visual enhancements are included, but one problem in IE6 is still present: double display of Inn-cidents. Not precisely sure what is causing it, it doesn't behave that way in any other browser and the JavaScript is pretty precise about what to display.
I continue to do more than lurk and will be posting regular again very soon!
My take on the Warhammer world has been weak.
One PC in my campaign just made his third career. The others are on their second. And all of the players have grand plans for the characters.
In reading The Thousand Thrones, it has dawned on me that the Empire is a dangerous place. Very dangerous. Nurgle cultists alone are dangerous sonuvbitches. Death lies around every corner in TTT. Yet, none of my players have felt in peril. And the one that was pulled a lucky charm. At least I know buying those is going to set the player back quite a bit, keeping him in the poor house; and then I'm not even sure that I played the rule for lucky charms correctly anyway. Reading some house rules on the internets, it looks like I'll be adopting the "maybe it wasn't lucky after all" approach with a die roll when he pulls it out.
Adventures in the Old World don't last long. But at the same time a GM needs to carefully balance the danger with playability, lest the game become a "one-shot."
PC longevity is important, but the world should feel "grim and perilous." Every die roll behind the screen should strike worry in the eyes of the players. For instance... and a game story follows, so tread carefully:
The Sigmar priest is earning money by taking offerings for prayers and purity seals. In his travels during the current campaign, he has been hearing of an outbreak of the Weevil Cough in the garrison of Helmgart. Random peasants are approaching him with fears of contracting the disease, or beseeching prayers for loved ones with the disease. I rolled his Toughness during the course of one of these random pleas to see if he contracted the cough. Sigmar shined upon him and he skirted the contagion. By the way, play like this is an opportunity for older GMs to share classic literature with younger players. This behavior by the priest player is almost straight out of history and literature, recall The Canterbury Tales anyone?
To my cyberstalker... beware... your PC might be next. Tread carefully in the OCIC waters. You have been forewarned. Maybe it is time to investigate spiking the mortality rates of PCs me thinks. What say you? 
If you have not gathered, I'm a Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay fanboy.
Certainly in the last few posts I have not been shy about it. From confessing my one-sourcer position regarding most other games, to pictures of life-size Space Marines outside GW retail stores.
The latter is a bit misleading. Because, generally speaking, the W40K RPG does not remotely interest me.
Sorry.
W40K as a table-top miniature wargame. Yes. As a RPG. No.
I will admit that in college I ran a WFRP 1st ed. campaign where the PC's patron was a retired Judicial Champion, secretly a Space Marine that befell a space warp. I don't recall the thread that had me create this patron, but I believe it stemmed from a White Dwarf introduction to Space Marines, c. 1990. Eh. I doesn't matter, suffice to know that Dark Heresy has not captured my imagination.
And yet I'm not without my criticisms of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 2nd. ed. As a game, it is A+. True to the 1st ed., the long suffering fanbase, and everything I loved about 1st. ed. Kudos to Chris Pramas and Green Ronin for the great job. As for the current canon, Storm of Chaos and all that, I could do without it. In fact, I do.
My current campaign is set in the year following the SoC. Intentionally. It allowed me to push aside must of the fluff, getting the world and its machinations solidly past the events and cut all of the old and new together very smoothly.
So if you want to ask me anything about another system, I'll entertain a grognard outlook and conversation with you. I may even play, as a player. But I'm not likely to invest time or money in another system. I'm very happy with Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay.
And all the baggage being a fanboy brings.
For everyone “kicking the tires”: Danke! Thanks! &tc.
The report of the tool is not functioning in Firefox 3 is a caching problem.
The remedy is to directly clear your cache and reload, or super refresh (usually a metakey plus R or Shift + F5). Try holding Shift and selecting Reload from the View menu.
I hope to get to the IE 6 problems tonight or in the next 24 hours.
Chuck at Winds of Chaos gave the GM tool Inns of the Empire a very favorable review!
In case you don't know about Winds of Chaos, you should, as a GM or player, drop by. He is a "top listed" Warhammer site with tremendous resources in maps, tables, and award winning scenarios. Thanks, Chuck!
If you're "kicking the tires," I'm working on some defects in IE6, just need the cycles to do it. Family and work got in the way in the last three days. Not a bad thing understand, but I don't want to let the tool stagnate!
I was just perusing a Warhammer author's blog, looking for something specific, found it, and then considered posting a trackback, more preferably a pingback, to find that his track- and ping-backs were flooded with spam. My legitimate sourcing would have been lost in the noise.
Part of this was clearly a poor choice for a blogging engine. Another part his lack of attention to the blog. Now, I've been guilty of the latter (but getting better). In the former, I have decided opinions about blogging tools... I'm a committer to the http://blojsom.sf.net project, albeit mostly patches nothing functional. None the less, I'm committed to understanding and making blogging better. I sensed from reading some of his posts, the author was frustrated, but lacked motivation to switch, or technical cahones to switch to something hosted or better than ASP-dot-whatever.
So success is commitment. Failure is not engaging the audience. The author in question clearly has fans that want to know more about what he is writing. There were significant comments, when he posted. If he was not failing, he tempts failure every month.
Sadly, without a way to know that a trackback would not be lost, I can't cite his work or the information. Other than to say, a sequel to Defenders of Ulthuan has a completed outline and looks to be in queue for late 2008. In the interim, I'll be getting Guardians of the Forest to build my elven repertoire at the gaming table.
Yes, the “author” is Graham McNeill. He is also just the resource to settle the “debate:” is High Elven chain mail canon or just a wishful “Tolkein-ization” of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay? Graham McNeill, are you reading?
A couple of “bugs” for IE 6 have been fixed... well, one bug and one enhancement.
The bug fixed was the PNG alpha transparency that was not transparent in IE6. This was addressed with the proprietary IE6 PNG alpha filter hack.
The enhancement was to add a tooltip for the "large, bold number" displayed next to the Number and Sizes of Rooms. This number is the vacancy multiplier. Grönberg defines this as:
“Results of 100+ indicate that the establishment is completely empty, which may serve as inspiration for an encounter (‘why is it empty?’). Conversely, results of less than 1 indicate a busy evening or even that the inn is ‘overbooked’ with guest being asked—even urged—to share rooms or sleep on the floor (or in the stable).”
A number of factors adjust this multiplier, from a base d100 “roll” performed on the backend, during inn creation.
I also styled the info icons with a help cursor to better callout that there was more information behind them.
There is still some work to be done with correcting the IE z-index positioning problem... knowing the problem is half the battle with IE.
I just uploaded my Inns of the Empire tool for general use.
The tool can be used to quickly generate names and characteristics for all kinds of hostels, coaching inns, taverns, clubs, and brothels in Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay.
Inns of the Empire is dually inspired. First, by the Random Fantasy Business Names generator by Mike Hensley at hackslash.net. The tool's functionality is based wholly on the work of Henrik Grönberg in Liber Fanatica, Vol. III. Credit is due to both individuals for the inspiration.
Additional credits go to the developers of the YUI. Inns of the Empire leverages the YUI library pretty heavily. And to Fonthead Design for the Black Beard font.
I tested the tool in the A Grade suite of browsers and did not find any major bugs, but do not hesitate to email me, or post a comment, with a defect that needs to be fixed. Be sure to tell me the browser and major version. The code is in my svn repos, so I can update and release fixes pretty quickly!
Again, major thanks to Henrik Grönberg for the imagination and completeness of his work for Liber Fanatica.
Lacking source books for races central to the Warhammer world, Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay players many times turn to the Warhammer Fantasy Battle army books for background material.
Some see this as a ploy by Games Workshop, some see it as a lack of focus on the consumer of WFRP... whatever the reason, GW does have some good material for players that turn to the army books.
One of my players, whose PC has a background as an orphaned Shadow Elf, picked up the High Elf Army Book. Being a "min/max'r," "rules advocate," &tc. he gleaned the following sentence, immediately arguing that a gross contradiction existed in the Old World Armoury where a description, or discussion, of Elven chain mail was made.
I don't have my OWA handy, but I did borrow his Elven army book to see just what he was trying to say:
“The armour worn by High Elves is beautifully fashioned from tiny metal scales making it lightweight and flexible, allowing the wearer to maintain their natural swiftness and agility.”
This single sentence has led to the interpretation by my player that elves shun, to the exclusion of all other technology, any armor not “fashioned from tiny metal scales. ” He further cited the artistic renderings and models of all High Elf depictions by Games Workshop. “Never are elves shown in chain mail!,” he says.
I argue it is a untenable position to take that elves in the Warhammer canon shun chain mail. Instead take the position that High Elves fashion the most exquisite chain mail available. In game terms, of "best quality" and "very rare."
Besides the beautiful mind of a player that can cross reference books to make the mental jumps/connections/assumptions, what say you?
Anyone in the WFRP circles know how to contact DSG at The Encroachment of Chaos? Seems his mail server is bouncing all mail with a 553 relay error.
Tried multiple SMTP boxes on different networks even... no luck.
Don't comment with email addresses of course, just email me; or let him know I wanted to thank him for his NPC records, ask him a question or two, provide some feedback and suggestions.
I'll be running a session of WFRP tomorrow and I'm up prepping while Dr. Who and BSG play.
How do I prep? This is going to be more cathartic for me, than a suggestion for you. But I'm getting better at this. Especially, since I had to abandon a campaign I was really enjoying. That now abandoned campaign called Waaagh! was great because I was using the Evil Overlord method of environment motivation. It was abandoned because, at the time, our gaming was sporadic, I didn't want to drag the EOs along, so character pasts were developed in solo sessions.
The solo sessions seeded a new campaign and a sort of prequel was crafted. I have been half-heartedly pushing it along with a lot of winging. A general story line has always been in mind, but now, with threads in play, PC backgrounds understood, I'm beginning to see an arch for a bigger campaign.
I generally prep by making notes on key NPCs and real general encounter outlines that drive the established threads. For example, several sessions ago, the PCs arrived in Altdorf, crowds pushing, and being rushed through "customs" for the Grand Conclave. The elf, a background established as an orphaned Shadow elf, raised in the Wood elf traditions, is pushed into an old hag. The hag, in a moment of clarity, or delusion, backs away in horror, then says "A great shadow follows you elf!" Being a superstitious lot, many of the faithful crowding the dock around the party, back away and the party, noting the eagerness of the custom agents to clear the dock and taking advantage of the distance afforded them by "vision," jumped to the head of the line.
I'm bringing the elf full circle soon, developing the threads to give something for each player background... cultists for the priest, runes for running by the dwarf, and a lot of greenskins for them all. And there is the merchant and his caravan...
It's all still loose. But there is conflict, challenge, and role-playing.