Lies, Damn Lies

Roleplaying:My campaigns

[Yes, more self indulgence. Thats really what blogs exist for...]

I blogged about my campaigns at the time, so I'm going to be a bit more focused here- a brief summary of what happened, what I was going for, and my favourite and least favourite moments.

My first ever campaign was in Dark Heresy, a system I'm not terribly fond of. It followed some acolytes eventual fight against a daemon that had plagued their inquisitor for quite some time. As it was my first campaign, I was eager to try new things, so there were several distinct mini-arcs which only tied in to the main plot tangentially. Most of the campaign was getting the inquisitor the kit he needed for a ritual (which, of course, went horribly wrong).

The good My favourite part was definitely the player's attempting to acquire an aspect warrior, imprisoned for illegal fighting in one of the richer estates. The method of acquiring said warrior was left open, and my players managed to rise to the challenge admirably. A particular moment I liked was when I threw in a random npc as decoration, then Nick chose to question him in a way I didn't expect, which worked really rather well.

The bad The opening adventure didn't quite work- I liked the idea of an assassin stalking the players, but had a hard time thinking of a way to kill the bastard. I needed a few more ways for them to defeat it than the vortex grenade. I really need to a sample adventure doing this sort of thing, to get an idea of how to work it properly. The final session was excessively long (also apparently under fluff there are only, like, 10 sisters of battle, but 40k fluff is so impossibly stupid i'm willing to ignore it), as often happens in my campaigns.

The next campaign was a mini-summer arc, which then turned into a published adventure. The summer arc was an idea I'd had in my head for a while, born of my collecting blood angels when younger. The idea of a blood angel who embraced the red thirst they were supposed to fight, but was not necessarily a minion of chaos, seemed fun to me, with a Chaplain attempting to hunt him down, and the inquisition getting in the way.

The good This campaign was in many ways the most open I've made. The players were plunked into a city with a specific objective and left to get on with it. They did have a contact in the administratum (ah, now that was a joy to run!), but were mostly on their own. The clues were there, and thanks to the Blood angel actually trying to attract attention, weren't too hard to track down.

The bad Once again, the final session. It was another "players need to kill hideous monster" thing, this time with an npc telling them a plan- I maybe should have given the players more agency here. They still had agency in how they chose to lead the blood angel to the factory, but maybe they could have come up with a better plan? As it was they managed a spectaculor failing of driving rolls, then a detonated frag grenade did them more damage than the space marine, at which point the psyker managed to keep the hulking monster busy by making him... trip over several times, at which point the npc pretty much had to save them (she was originally going to live). Maybe I should just stop being obsessed with the notion of a boss monster. Is it always necessary? I don't know.

(to be continued)

Labels: my life, roleplaying

posted by Mr K @ 11:27 am