I’m now back with my feet on the ground after a fun Grogmeet weekend in Manchester centre. I played two and ran one, with a nice slice of meal and pub socialising exquisitely dovetailed between. Throw in a slightly bizarre hotel experience at the Britannia Sachas Hotel, where I was greeted with a request for my passport, and then my driver’s licence, to be allowed to stay there. I had to have my key card on display to be permitted re-entry into the hotel by security. There’s some history there somewhere.
On Friday early eve, I tagged onto a welcoming group of Groglings who were going to explode at Bundobust, and shared a convivial meal with some excellent chat and a follow-up beer. This oiled me to a humming readiness for the Friday evening game.
Jeremy Gilbert ran an excellent ‘Midwinter Mystery’, which was an MR James-flavoured homebrew (with a touch of PG Wodehouse), using basic PBTA rules. As the conversation and action flowed, so did the generously provided port and blue cheese, enriching the sensoury experience beautifully. What a fine game, with great company, and eased me in gently to the following day.
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| Jeremy’s generous cheese and port |
I was drawn to Paul Baldowski’s ‘Necropolis Now’ game for the opportunity to play Gary Gygax’s rarely lamented ‘Dangerous Journeys’, his post D&D roleplaying game, venemously sued into piratical obscurity by TSR. When I got to the table I discovered that Paul had clearly decided that nobody would be foolish enough to want to experience the full game rules and had prepared the adventure using ‘Mythus Prime’, which I understand to be a simplified spin on the game. Mythus Prime has the advantage of one-shot simplicity and ease of play, even if there was little else to recommend it. The adventure had an authentic Gygaxian feel of barely decipherable puzzles, unavoidable deadly choices and TPKesque combat encounters in an Aegypt that should never have been. Paul is guaranteed to prepare and present a great game exprience, and he did so again here. Maybe next time he’ll run a game of the full Dangerous Journeys rules? Actually, maybe he got us close enough!
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| Paul’s group for the Gygax experience |
Sometimes you need to GM a great session to give your confidence a bit of a boost. When you are in such illustrious high quality gaming company, you want your own game to be up to par. This was my first time running Warhammer Fantasy 4th Edition (WFRP), only having played the game a couple of times online. I do sometimes set myself encompassing challenges. WFRP is an intricate game, with fairly dense rules and a core opposed test mechanic that requires a calculation of success levels, that isn’t immediately intuitive. Add a plethora of ‘talents’, four (4!!) meta currencies and a further one for combat, and a host of modifiers and look up tables for criticals and you’ve got yourself a potential big clunker!
It might have helped if the rules were laid out clearly and unambiguously. Sadly, the core book has the habit of leaving a key explanatory clause wafting at the bottom of a lengthy paragraph. I read the opposed test mechanics three or four times, only to discover that I had got them wrong when I played the game. However, the game is now fairly mature, which means that there are lots of helpful resources and some new twists to rules to make things that bit easier. There is a great rules summary out there, which condenses most everything to about six pages of small font. Invaluable. ‘Group Advantage’ simplifies the edge that the group (rather than individual) can gain over their adversaries, so I created a quick table sheet with beads to manage that flow.
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| Group Advantage Sheet |
Of the four meta currencies I suggested we focus on Fortune, the one that gives a reroll or bonus to success level. These were quickly used in play! In fact my excellent group of players did a stunning job of grasping the complexities of the game and gamefully riding on the coat tails of my adjudications. The mechanical gears whirled fairly well, and the players felt they had a good taste of how the game worked.
Although there were depths to the rules that we didn’t plumb, I was determined to provide an accurate presentation of the game, whilst maintaining the pace needed for the session to deliver a beginning, middle and end. It took some considerable study to get myself match fit, but if you are going to offer a game then it is on you to know it well. The prep paid off.
The adventure was Hell Rides to Hallt, a well constructed adventure that was a mystery brim full of ‘golden roleplay opportunities’, set in a walled town with a murder problem. Spoiler free game discussion below.
My group of players threw themselves into the adventure and into the portrayal of their characters with gusto. I had deployed some old A5 menu holders to provide character standees for display, with a short text view of all the other characters on the player facing side. A little extra to give some inter group connection and fun.
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| The player characters |
Allowing for breaks, we probably had not much over three hours of game time, so that focused my presentation, and positioning of key clues to drive towards a resolution. I had walked through the adventure twice, testing the potential use of rules as I went, to give me confidence not only in the story and resolution options, but also how the characters will engage with the narrative using the involved WFRP ruleset. It was time well spent.
Whilst keeping the player characters at the centre, and the player decisions as key during the unfurling mystery, I will confess to a certain joyous abandon in playing the inhabitants of Hallt. Everyone, from the superstitious and afeared common folk, to pompous should know betters, drunken priests, timorous silversmiths, and the lofty govenor of the city. Our interactions over that short magical time brought us into the story with smiles, laughter and good humour.
We managed to navigate the story to a satisfying and deadly conclusion, with two of the group laid low at the end. It felt unnecessary to detail every drop of glistening truth to the players at the end. Life is rarely like that. They had uncovered enough, played their hands well, and succeeded where many would have failed.
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| My brilliant players (and an extra!) |
The picture above was taken at the end of the session, and I’ve just noticed that we were some of the last to finish. We actually finished the game bang on time, something I think is important in a packed schedule, where players may need to get on with the rest of their planned day. As a GM, sometimes you get a session that plays out so well, it fully reaffirms and encourages you, restoring all your confidence points, even while carrying the fatigued condition. This game was a gem, which is as well as I am already committed to presenting it at another two coventions over the next couple of months. Thanks in large part goes to my excellent players, who engrossed themselves in the game and shaped it right through to the end.
My thanks also to all I met and chatted with at Grogmeet. I may only have AAA social batteries, but you filled them with friendship and fun. And of course, to the inestimable Dirk the Dice and Blythy of the Grognard Files Podcast, for making all this possible. You did an amazing job!
Looking forward to the next time…
