The best thing about the new Guardians of the Galaxy Trailer is ...

...this:

Starlord's dad is clearly Jack Burton! It explains so much!

I know , I know, - he's supposed to be Ego the Living Planet. Let's just see how that turns out/

Campaign Concept: Rogue Trader as Black Sails

It's not like I needed another campaign, but the ideas come when the ideas come.

So is that picture above really all that different from this:

The Rogue Trader typical campaign as presented is basically you can do what you want while staying one step ahead of any local governors, admirals, inquisitors, and the other agencies and aliens and military units in the area, but the big picture take is that you're (at least on paper) on the Imperial side. You don't really have to stick with that though. You get far enough out on the fringes of the Astronomicon and "the will of the Emperor" gets pretty fuzzy.

I mean, you could probably try and run it like a Traveller free trader campaign. Why though? You have more wealth than many planets! It's not like you're scraping to buy fuel! I'd say for that game just play Traveller.

You could try and run it more like a Star Wars smuggler campaign but how does it work when the smuggler has a Star Destroyer? Star Wars does the smuggler game better I think.

In terms of power level the game is much more like Star Trek - the players are in charge of a ship that could level most planetary defenses all by itself. In RT they also have enough wealth to wreck most planetary economies if they chose to do so. It's civilization-destroying power! Yet they are not bound by a Federation-style Prime Directive or oaths of service. You could say it's more like a Klingon campaign would be but it's different even from that as it's not just honor and military might - economic goals are a big part of it.

With a Rogue Trader game the longer term goal might be to locate a long-lost planet from pre-Great Crusade days. Assuming the party eventually does that the outcome might be exploring it and putting a colony on it, exploring it and looting it, exploring it and eliminating any competing interests (including xenos), using it as a secret base, or returning and selling the location to the highest bidder!

That sounds a lot more like a pirate type game than a straight-up merchant campaign. A distant but powerful authority that's theoretically in charge, multiple independent competing parties looking for wealth and personal power, local and regional authorities with vary degrees of power and influence, foreign entities competing as well,  all taking place in an area where knowledge -and maps - are incomplete. Violence is at least as common as negotiation, and betrayal is all too common as well. It's an environment where one man could "change the map".

Black Sails is in its 4th season and is concerned with various pirate captains and crew and governors in and around Nassau in the early 1700's. It's also a prequel to Treasure Island so there's one idea of how a "sequel" campaign might go. Various issues during the course of the show include things like :

• How can we take that giant Spanish treasure ship?
• Who has that giant gold hoard?
• What are the Spanish doing?
• Who is this new governor and what are his plans?
• Where is Blackbeard?
• Who's the best captain?
• How long is this new captain going to run his mouth before someone kills him?
• What's this about a secret island settlement run by escaped slaves?

There's a ton of intrigue, infighting, and maneuvering for power. 

• Some of the captains just want to raid ships and be left alone
• Some of the captains have a vision of an independent Nassau and have been fighting for that for years
• The newly-appointed governor sees this as his chance to secure his family's position by bringing order to this corner of the Empire
• The business operators in Nassau are caught between the independence movement and the governor

Constraints they operate within:

• Go too far and you might force the British to take action - like sending in a new governor, which makes things difficult for most
• Go too far and you might anger the Spanish, making everyone's lives harder in a different way
• Go too far and some of the legendary pirates might find their interests in Nassau's fortunes rekindled - like, say, Blackbeard.
• Get too stupid on the island and you might force the plantation owners from the interior to band together and take action
• Move too fast as governor and you might find the pirates unite to oppose you

Substitute in Eldar, Inquisitors, Space Marine chapters, the Imperial Sector fleet, and various local governors and you have pretty much the same scenario. 

I think it has a ridiculous amount of potential. Sure, maybe you start out as "agents of the throne" in the beginning but will you stay in that role? Opportunity abounds, but the more constraints you place upon yourself the more those opportunities slip away. What will your crew think? What about your profit factor? Your ship? Your place in history?

I think a nudge in this direction eliminates any chance of "well what do we do now" happening with most sets of players. Rogue Trader, of all the 40K RPG's, gives players the most freedom to do as they wish. For the GM that might be tough to manage with all of the interesting things in the 40K universe. Start viewing it as a pirate campaign, particularly a location-based one ala Black Sails, and I think you have an awesome mix of "centered" freedom for a great campaign.

 

Final Complication: The "Hyborian Sector" is something I wrote up for Traveller a long time ago. The jungle planets of Kush, the trade stars of Zingara and Zamora, the "local empires" of Aquilonia and Nemedia ... I'm not sure I need it for this campaign but I do have to consider it. Is mixing in yet another "inspiration" too much? Not sure yet. I'll let you know.

40K Friday: Making Terminators Great Again

If you've played 40K for any length of time you've heard the legends of the Space Marine Terminators. Maybe you read them, maybe you've heard tales from earlier versions of the game, but you probably haven't seen a ton of "legendary" behavior from them in any recent games. The only type you tend to see these days are Thunder Hammer and Storm Shield Terminators and while they do usually perform as expected they are still an expensive and limited-purpose choice. I really dislike this state of affairs as they are one of the things I loved about 40K in the early days, so here are a few ideas about how to fix this problem:

1. Give them the Special Issue Ammunition rule from Sternguard. People like sternguard, and not just for the combi weapons, Their special ammo rule makes them amazingly flexible and capable of taking on almost any enemy unit. In-universe they are 1st company veterans, as are terminators, so there's not much reason to share this rule. Sternguard do not get to use it with storm bolters - fine. Maybe terminator storm bolters have special ammo feeds that can handle the complication. This is the single easiest change GW could make to improve this unit - no modeling changes required at all, just a change to the rules for the unit, and no, I would not change the point cost they have now. People would still take sternguard because they would still be cheaper, could still take combi-weapons and heavy flamers, and you can fit more in a drop pod. They might also consider using terminators in some situations though, and that would be better for the game. 
2. Let them swing their powerfists at initiative. Terminator armor is rare and special, right? Let them ignore the "unwieldy" rule. Yeah that, especially combined with #1 above makes termies really scary - isn't that how it's supposed to be? Yes it makes characters in this armor really nasty but then maybe we would see a few more of them and a few less on bikes. This is another no-modeling-change-required option.
3. Bump their toughness up by 1. I know, I know, but if a bike makes you that much tougher, why the hell doesn't terminator armor, the ultimate form of personal protection in the game? It lowers their vulnerability to massed small-arms fire which is the main way terminators die these days. It helps reset the balance when it comes to "how do you kill termies" from "50 lasgun shots" back to "plasma guns". Again, no modeling changes are needed. The models are already huge compared to the old Rogue Trader days anyway, so this seems completely appropriate. 
4. Terminator suits are super-strong right? Those legs are pretty bulky, and they're supposed to enhance the already Captain America level strength of the guy inside, right? Make them jump infantry! They don't need jump packs, they just leap! heck, make it a once-per-game thing if we have to and we've mitigated their other big weakness - they're slow! 

Now I would be happy if any one of these was implemented and ecstatic if any two were. I'd say #1 and #3 make the most sense and would solve the two biggest problems they have in the game right now. #2 might be a little too much and #4 is probably too radical for how the unit has been portrayed but really any or all of these would help put terminator marines back in their proper place.

Special note: Chaos terminators? Yeah I'd do the same thing. Let them have some fun too.

Agile-Style Gaming

Agile development has been a thing for a while now and if you know what it is you don't need to hear anything more about it from me, and if you don't you probably don't care. That said there have been some interesting parallels between work and hobby recently so bear with me.

We've had a lot of talk here about games we'd like to play more and the downside of being locked in to a set game for every available session time. I had a new plan but as it turns out we're only really following about half of it so far.

The first weekend of the month is Mutants and Masterminds. That's held steady. I was originally thinking we would rip through Time of Crisis in a few sessions and get on to the "main" campaign. My players though are having a ton of fun with the adventure which means more RP and talking and more deliberation over choices and also means it's just a really meaty campaign. So I have stopped worrying about when we will "get through it" and just started enjoying the journey instead. That's kind of the real goal, right? I have it! Right here! So all is well with that game.

We also planned to run Deadlands on the second weekend each month. That worked for January. For February, one of my three players was going to be out that weekend so I opened up the conversation about what to play. Apprentice Who was going to be around  and based on the past that meant Marvel Heroic sounded like a good idea. Then Apprentice Red ended up coming home that night while Apprentice Who had a school dance to attend. We didn't have a pre-existing "default" game for that particular combination of Paladin Steve, Apprentice Blaster, and Apprentice Red so now it was really open.

I ended up running Runequest, second edition to be specific.

So now our "gaming matrix" looks like this:

• Two of the boys usually means ICONS
• All three of the boys is Star Wars d6
• Steve + Blaster + Who = Marvel Heroic (Red has played in this too)
• Steve + Blaster + Red = RQ2
• Steve + Dave + Blaster = Deadlands
• Steve + Dave + Tsai + Lady Blacksteel = DCC

So instead of having a set game I run all the time and drop players in and out of - or have them ignore because they are not interested - I pretty much run a set game based on which players are available. Now this does mean I have a ridiculous number of campaigns that are technically "live" but they may not have been touched for 2-3 months. 

To touch on the "agile" parallel this is my backlog: Each system is an Epic, each specific campaign is a "feature" (because theoretically I could have multiple campaigns in the same system, like I sort of have with Deadlands and do have with M&M). each session is a "story". It's not a perfect analogy but I needed to call it something. It's not a traditional campaign setup. It's not really an open table/west marches type of game. It's really its own approach in my view. It just kind of developed over the last year or two and now I'm embracing it as an actual plan rather than happenstance.

How do I organize it? well, each campaign has its own binder with notes on prior sessions, ideas for future sessions, comments on using some published material where I can, and probably some character sheets. I keep a folder with material on the computer too, from notes to HeroLab files. I'm also playing around with some online resources for the players too - more on that if it becomes a real thing. My memory hasn't completely failed so once I skim through some notes it's not difficult to pick up where we were when we ended last time. I have started having the players tell me what they remember first, going around the table, and then I sum up with what I have noted myself. It seems to work and gets everyone's wheels turning about where the game is right now. 

One of the side benefits: this helps handle any "Gamer ADD" I am feeling by ensuring that we rarely play the same game three times in a row.

Of course the maximum flexibility approach here means that we may only play some of these a few times a year. No one seems to mind. Yet. It's something I will be watching for, and I have no problems with trying to "force" a session on occasion - "Hey, I have an open Friday night coming up and we haven't played X in a while - can you 3 make it Friday night?".

Anyway, that's how things are going around here.

Frostgrave as an RPG Campaign?

I wrote about Frostgrave almost a year ago and while we have not done much with it I still think about it from time to time. You can see that post for a summary of what it is but the short version is an ancient city suddenly frozen in ice in a magical disaster is slowly thawing, drawing in adventurers (particularly wizards) and looters and thieves and bandits. The main game book is concerned with exploring the ruined city itself but subsequent books have covered the undercity, the barbarian tribes outside the city, and the resurgence of a specific villain in "Thaw of the Lich lord".

You see what they're doing here right? They publishing a lightly-disguised long-term regional RPG campaign. We have the ruined city, the dungeons of the city, the dangerous parts of outside the city, and a campaign adventure to kick things off!

I mean sure, it's sold as a miniatures game but it has all of the background info and general area info you need. There are no big maps of the city or the area so you're free to work up or adapt one that you like, but it is a specific, interesting scenario with a designated state (mostly ruined) and a climate that's not generic (cold and frosty). It's post-apocalyptic in a sense in that there is no organized government so you're free to act as you wish. Monsters are described and I would summarize it as constructs, elementals, demons, undead, and animal types, plus hostile humans. It's not generic "broken city full of orcs or goblins". It's at that just-right level of detail where you have enough to build something with the intended flavor but not so much that you're tripping over it. You don;t have to worry about getting the street name wrong, for example.

It's a little weird because maps are one of those things that get my wheels turning. This set of books really doesn't have any. The concept really appeals to me though in spite of this. I suspect it's the ruined city thing that pulls me in - that's probably my favorite adventuring environment. From Dwellers of the Forbidden City, to Phlan, to Neverwinter, to Ruins of Intrigue, to a whole lot of Gamma World that's one of the instant interest hot buttons for me. I posted about it years ago here and none of that has changed for me.  I've even been looking at Big Rubble for a potential Runequest game so it really is a constant thing.

So I really like the idea and could probably have a ton of fun with it with an intermittent miniatures campaign, but if I really like it that much why not go a little further? Instead of each player running a warband why not have each player as part of the same warband? Co-op instead of PvP? It narrows the focus and let's you dig in that much deeper. It probably doesn't help that I am readin "Playing at the World" at this same time and that whole evolution of wargames and miniatures into RPGs is covered in great depth there. this feels like something we could recreate in our own way.

Inevitably you have to look at rules. "What would you run it in?" someone asks. Not sure yet.

RQ is interesting but I don't know that it would be a great fit for a direct translation. There's a little more magic in Frostgrave - items, locations, spells - and RQ doesn't focus on that quite as much.  The un-freezing ruined city full of danger and magic though ... that does tie in to the whole quest for Runes and things. I think it could be done but the flavor would be a little different.

Dungeon Crawl Classics is another option and would be more mechanically interesting than some games. The monsters and magic fit just fine. DCC has its own flavor too though and while it definitely fits I'm still torn on whether it is the best fit. Maybe the party starts off as zero-level nobodies working for a wizard, then gradually move up the level chain.

5th Edition? Well yeah, and it even has the same 20-level progression. I had not thought about it much before working on this post but it would be a new setting for the new game. The different types of wizard would fit well within the assumptions of the setting.

Basic/Labyrinth Lord/Swords and Wizardry/Some other retroclone ish type game would all work pretty damn well here too. Let's see you're a band of people searching a ruin for loot and magic. The whole setting is basically a return to the birth of D&D!

I think 4th Edition could certainly do it. The emphasis on miniatures combat and the more structured approach to monsters and magic items fits in with the actual Frostgrave game mechanics pretty well. The problem is that I already have a stack of ten thing's I'd like to do with 4E. I'd rather make this something else.

It's not a bad idea for a Pathfinder campaign either but I'm on a break from PF so we won;t be doing it that way.

Last, one that I almost missed but that seems so obvious: Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay. Frostgrave is clearly related to Mordheim, so why not use the Old World and the associated rules for the whole thing? This might be one of the best concepts to get that game onto my table.

So there are seven options for rules that I think might work. What are the general traits I am interested in?

• Something new! Make it its own setting. I don't want it in the Realms, or Glorantha. I might consider Greyhawk if I went with a D&D type game as it does actually fit in there fairly well, but it's not a place you've been before. I'd consider putting it in the Warhammer world as I mentioned and again it's an unknown region. Other than that it needs to be a new game in a new world. I could even let my players sketch out where they are from in the outside world. 
• The city is the star! Regardless of setting the campaign is the city! It's not going to get invaded by an evil empire, or the drow, or hobgoblins, or aliens - the adventure is in uncovering what's there. It's not a political campaign and it's not a war story. There may be factions in the city as time goes on but it's not about running for mayor. As for outside the city, that stuff doesn't really matter. We won;t be getting caught up in world wide events or leaving the city for an epic quest across the seas or even the planes - there's enough going on right here to keep everyone busy.
• People come and people go! It's a rotating cast but it's one big story. Characters can be injured or killed but the game goes on: the "story" of the campaign is the exploration of the city, not that of any one character or even one band of characters necessarily. Frostgrave has rules for bases such as inn, libraries, and towers so characters can retire or take a break to run those while the rest continue. 

I'll post more as I dig farther into it. This is one option for the potential "fantasy campaign comeback" and I need to do some more work on it but it feels like it has a lot of potential to me. 

Running Mutants and Masterminds - Some Notes

I've run a few sessions of both second and third edition over the last 15 months or so now and thought I would share some of my experiences, both good and bad, as far as actually running the game.

• 3E has a really great core mechanic. Your character typically has a ranged attack bonus and a melee attack bonus.  Each power has an effect rank, effectively a "damage" rating. Even if I don't know all of the details of a power I can be sure that it will have a type - melee, ranged, area, or perception - that will tell me how it "hits", and that the rank and defense will tell me how to resist it. This is all easily done without cracking open a book (assuming it's part of the character sheet) and keeps things moving. 

• M&M also has a nice damage system: I roll to hit against your fixed defense (dodge, parry, etc) then you roll to resist my fixed "damage". It's nicely balanced and sets up a certain rhythm to the game. Shadowrun had a system  like this and I always liked the way that it flowed. It feels somewhat similar here. 

• 3E's modifiers are generally +/- 2 or +/- 5. Not a chart, not a list, but basically "minor" or "major" and the same numeric modifier every time. It's one of the things I liked about D&D 4E and I'm glad it was carried over here. 

•  The unified conditions of 3E are also a huge win. Instead of having separate and slightly different rules for every little thing like sleep, entangle, paralysis every place it appears (like a lot of older games) there is a set list of conditions for the game. Different attacks or events can inflict those conditions and once your players know what "Hindered" means they can roll with it whether it comes from fatigue, terrain, or that net wrapped around their legs.

• The downside of those unified conditions is that all of those separate old powers like Flash, Stun, Entangle etc are now rolled up into one giant power called "Affliction". Players do not immediately grasp this, that this power is the gateway for almost anything they want to do to a hostile target that isn't "damage". There's been a complaint from fairly early on that this takes some of the flavor out of the game. To me though, it really only takes some of the flavor out of the rulebook - it takes nothing away from your players or your game. If your "Insta-Hardening Foam" blast is mechanically an affliction that inflicts Hindered and Bound conditions progressively that doesn't seem like it's reduced in flavor. Maybe it's the old Champions player in me that started playing with effects-based power design a long time ago, but I do not mind. 

•  One on one combats between evenly matched opponents can take a little while. Nothing like a higher level Pathfinder game, but not instantaneous either. The most common outcome of an attack is a -1 to future toughness rolls. The next one adds a "Dazed" to that, then the next one adds a "Staggered" (dazed and hindered) and failing the roll by a lot means "Incapacitated" which means the fight is over for you. It can take a while, or a few lucky rolls, for an attacker to put enough -1's on an opponent to get to that last level. Now if multiple attackers jump on one similarly-leveled opponent they can rack those up pretty quickly and overwhelm their enemy and that seems to be the key to faster combat. 

• Related to that and speaking strictly as a GM it's tricky to run a full team of super-enemies against a full team of super-player-characters. Some of that will improve with time I hope but considering that each super-character is a unique set of stats and skills and powers it can be some real work to keep up with what each bad guy wants to do in any given round. Let's see I have a battlesuit guy, a speedster, a mentalist, a stretchy guy, and a gadget genius. That's five different sets of powers and tactics and personalities I have to juggle, far more than the typical D&D encounter of say 5 orc barbarians, a shaman, and a chief! It is easier when you build them yourself, and it's a good idea to include minions and sets of similar bad guys, but it's not always possible. 

In search of ways to make the game run even easier I've been using HeroLab and its combat console and that does have the benefit of keeping all of the characters and their numbers and power descriptions right there at hand. The downside is that I have to make sure everyone is in HeroLab before I start. There is a pretty big batch of pre-made villains and minions and animals and robots and ninjas all in there which makes it even easier to bring new things in on the fly. 

The only real problem is that I don't really like running it from the computer. 

I mean, I've run Pathfinder this way for years and it works, but for M&M I feel like I'm spending more time looking at the screen than I am at the table and the players. I ran D&D 4E and all of its conditions and powers from paper, surely I could run this the same way?

It's very much a "feel" thing. I might even keep the laptop handy for reference purposes, but I'd like the default to be paper, not screen.

I think the key is something like condition cards, one of which is up higher on this page. Combat and powers tend to stick conditions on people and that's where some decent ways to track that you're at half movement, can only take a standard action, and are at a -2 for everything would help. I saw one idea for using color-coded poker chips for this and while I like it they would not tell you the mechanics of the condition directly.  I'm leaning towards some kind of tent cards with the condition name on one side and the details on the back as I think that covers everything in one go.

Anyway, more to come on this. I'll post pictures if I get something together that looks halfway decent.

40K Friday: Blood Angels Lessons Learned and Future Plans

I had a lot of fun with these guys playing 4 games in one week. It's been a while since I've built a new marine army and gotten it out on the table. The Blood Angels are not considered a "power codex" in 7th edition but they have a lot of units that are just fun to play. I decided early on to go light on vehicles with this one and focus on more of a drop pod and jump pack army for speed.

Things I really like:

• Furioso dreads
• Mephiston
• Being just a little bit faster and stronger in assault than other marine armies
• Grav bikers
• Drop pods
• Heavy flamers

Things I am pondering

• Troops choices: The Baal Strike Force requires two of them , just like a standard CAD. 
• The two minimum tac squads did alright in the last battle and a heavy weapon lets them contribute to the fight. I'd like to get more out of them though.
• A bigger tac squad with maximum flamers is a candidate for the 4th or 5th drop pod if I add more
• Scouts! The cheapest option is a pair of minimum scout squads. They aren't all that strong but they do have infiltrate and outflank options which makes them more interesting than "five guys sitting in a ruin". Fitted for close combat that's potentially 15 attacks at S5 I5 on the charge, plenty to hurt a minimum tac squad or backfield heavy weapon squad.

•  Elites: 2 Death Company and a Furioso are definitely a regular part of the force. The question is at slot #4
• The sternguard are great but they do come with a cost. For small to medium fights I may have to use something else, but I am building a 10-man squad of them regardless.
• Death Company - I will be building these out to two 10-man squads. 
• Sergeant Nameless' Assault Squad might get promoted to Vanguard Vets. For a smallish price bump they go to 2 attacks each over a regular assault squad. I'm not looking at storm shields and all of that for them - just another speedy melee squad to back up everything else.
• Command Squad - these would be Mephiston's "other" bodyguard unit - 5 guys in a drop pod. It's mandatory to take one of them as the company champion which is not something I would take on my own but he does relieve Meph of having to accept challenges. I would also include a medic which gives Meph Feel No Pain - very important considering his lack of an invulnerable save. The other three guys will have plasma guns. This unit isn't quite as versatile as the sternguard but they are still pretty mean (7 plasma shots if inside of 12") when shooting and in melee (with Meph of course) and help keep him alive with FNP and Look Out Sir options. These guys are under construction right now.
• I have a blast cannon Furioso, a regular assault cannon dread, and a flexible confiuguration Furioso all finished with a librarian, a regular lascannon, and an undecided furioso/DC dread all waiting. One of these would go in the "other" of the 4th or 5th drop pod.
• Terminators: I have some, I'm just not sure I see a need for them right now. Back burner.

The pod assault melta squad under construction. The sergeant's in a rather "Josey Wales" pose and that's not an accident.  

• Fast Attack: This section is getting crowded!
• The melta vets in a pod are solid and won't be going anywhere. I am building a squad configured exactly how I want it right now.
• I built a jump melta squad too, just in case
• The bikes really crowd things up here: 6 grav bikes and two MMAB's mean I have two or 3 slots filled as I've been thinking about breaking the attack bikes off into their own 2-bike unit. These are all built or being built right now.
• I have 2 other "traditional" assault squads with swords and pistols. I don't know how much action they will see as this slot is already so crowded. They're already built and painted so it's no extra work.
• I haven't even tried to fit landspeeders in here but I could make some.  They'll have to wait for now.

• Heavy Support:
• I have a Baal predator. It's painted and done. I thought I wanted more but I'm just not sure it fits into how I see this force working
• I have old-style over-the shoulder missile launchers, lascannons, and heavy bolters I have already set aside for this army. I don't know how much use they will see as devastators but they also give me options to swap in for the heavy weapon on some of those tactical squads I am pondering. 
• Land raiders, vindicators, whirlwinds, etc - maybe next year will be "build the Blood Angel tank army" year but I don't see it happening this year. 

Beyond adding two more drop pods I do have one other angle I am thinking about trying out. With BA Rhino's being fast vehicles they could do a 24" move on Turn 1 and pop smoke. That should be enough to get say a heavy flamer tac squad onto an objective or into the fight, -OR- it would be enough to get a devastator squad with say two multi-meltas into range to threaten some stuff on Turn 2.  

Bikes and parts everywhere!

Final complication: I also decided to bump up the army to the current standard 32mm bases for full-on marines in power armor (meaning "not the scouts"). It's some extra work and a little bit of extra expense but since I'm just now building them why not make the change? If I like it I may do it to the Dark Angels as well since they are in a similar state of construction. Right now I'm planning to go with some green static grass and some gray rocks to give a little contrast with the red/white/black/gold on so many of the figures.

So there's the "state of the army" for the BA's for 2017. Once it's all painted up I'll have 3000+ points which should make for plenty of choice in games for the rest of this year. Lots of building, lots of painting, lots of "bits" being purchased to finish these things out too, so thank goodness for eBay. 

More to come!

Freedom City: Thoughts Around the Campaign(s)

I ran another session of Time of Crisis over the weekend and it's a blast - but more on that later!

 In the aftermath I've been looking around at my notes and character sheets and past blog entries for the various M&M campaigns and realized things are kind of scattered. The tag over there on the right side of the screen is for "Freedom City 2000" which was one of my early ideas for a Freedom City campaign but isn't terribly relevant to what I am doing now. Over on the left I've noted it as Freedom City: Year One which is more relevant as it is what I am trying to do but even then it's not entirely correct. To me, what I've been doing the past five years or so with one or two games a year and what I'm doing right now are really all more of a prologue, a prelude to a regular, ongoing, city-based modern superhero campaign. That said, you take what you can get. I'm really trying to get it organized in my head as much as anything as what's done is done and what's being done is being done and what we will do is not really a thing yet. It's very much like the comic book universes we all know so I can at least take some comfort in that.

None of this matters to my players of course - they show up, we have a good time, and we schedule the next session. We get some "old warhorse" stories but not nearly as many as say D&D because we haven't played as much supers in comparison. They don't care so much who was or wasn't here for a particular session or that Captain So and So's powers changed between Session #1 and Session #3 because they're playing it, not reading it or watching it. Noting it (at least) and explaining it (hopefully) matters to me because I am trying to create a connected universe, hopefully something that wows them months or years from now with a callback to something that happened in one of these early sessions.

So here's where I am - I need to think more carefully about these kinds of things and keep it a little more organized. So ...

• Freedom City: Prelude is what I am running now and is what all of my old FC2K stuff falls into. I was hoping that it would neatly fall into a system category too and that Freedom City for M&M 3E would be out by now but it's just taken too long for that. Of course now that I have actually started a regular game I'm sure they will get it out the door this year. You're all welcome! The original concept is described here.
  
  The idea is that this is all in the past and covers all of the old 1E/2E history and events, culminating in the Time of Crisis! ToC is the Great Retcon  - when it's over I'm probably going to let my players rebuild their characters completely and put them at PL11. I'm also toying with the idea of changing up the timeline and the history. This is partly to emphasize the elements I want to use in the campaign and partly to put our own spin on it. The original 2E (and forthcoming 3E) timelines would be one version of history while this new one would be ours. This helps me put the PC's at the center of things. It also has the benefit of giving me an easy "alternate history" to jump to when needed, one where the PC's are not the driving factor, one where they might not even exist as heroes at all!
  
  I'm also thinking about calling it "Year Zero" then once we finish ToC going to "Year One". Not super original I know but it does make it easy to follow, keeps the actual year generic, and lets me insert Big Events as a mini-campaign without getting too specific on the timing. I see stuff like the robots, Spatula City, and the bridge adventure and the others as leading up to ToC and the big reset. Sketching out 10-12 events at first for each season and letting the characters drive more and more as the game goes on should be enough for the traditional 12 "issues".  The whole year Zero thing also covers us learning how the game works to a much greater degree, much like the characters are learning their whole thing. I like that parallel.
  
  Feel/Tone/Thing that makes it different: This is the high four-color superhero campaign. Most of it is in the city, some around the world, a little bit in space. Mutants, aliens, robots, altered humans and every type of hero rub elbows in Freedom City. It's Marvel New York. It's the "everything" campaign, the "anything is possible" campaign. It's also the "anyone can join" campaign and the "sure you can roll up another hero" campaign. This is the Avengers or Justice League campaign.

• Emerald City: Same universe, same continent, different feel. At one time I was trying to slide this over to the DC universe and considering how little we have played it that might still happen. The idea here though is that EC is not over-populated with heroes or villains and the player characters are the only heavy-ish hitters in town. It's more structured and less free-for all. The idea is that each player would really only have one hero in this game and they would be more tied in to the local people and organizations. I would be aiming for a more intimate feel. This campaign would be more like the X-Men, but instead of "mutants" as the unifying element "Emerald City" itself would be the unifying element. I don't know how well I could pull it off but I think it might be an interesting change from the main campaign. Turning EC into another FC kind of eliminates the need for a separate city anyway - it needs to feel different and not just be a different set of names doing the same things. 

• Atomic City: Completely different universe - this one is totally my homebrew creation. When FC feels to restrictive, too much like "other people's characters", this is where we go. I see it as a Bronze Age four-color game as well but with a totally different cast of characters and no connection to the M&M setting. There will be a heavy dose of Champions lore in it, particularly old 2nd-3rd-4th edition lore. Not the "Universe" stuff but the villains and maybe even some of the heroes and organizations that some of us loved from that game. If I ever run Champions again it would probably be set here, but M&M is still the mechanics set of choice here for now. Except for the Animated Series, which is still ICONS. Want to team up with Marksman, Seeker, and Minuteman? This is probably where that happens.
  
  I could see this running with a different group or on a different night or just as an occasional one-shot here and there. Maybe I run it for the Apprentices or for one set of friends in between the FC sessions.  Maybe we come up with a plot that needs to be resolved and run a special 4-issue limited series here.
  
  Really this one is "home" - take everything I like about comics/movies/animated stuff, mix it in with what I have liked about other super games and super game settings, add in stuff I have come up with over the years that I like and this is what you get.

Of course this also sets up the ultimate fun scenario - crossovers! We've already pretty much established that the DC comic and TV universes also exist in this cosmos  - see the recaps for those details - and I expect Marvel to follow soon. Why not let the players establish this kind of thing, especially this early in the campaign? It pays off now and it will pay off down the road too. 

...and no, I do not have the time to run all of these on a regular basis. Keeping one of them on track for once a month, and working in the others a few times a year is probably as much as I can hope for right now. I'm OK with that though, as that's still a ton of fun.

40K Thursday - Blood Angels Holiday Battle 4: 2000 points "Cloak and Shadows II"

The undercard featured Blaster's Eldar vs. Red's Necrons

Despite losing badly in terms of card-based VP's last time I felt like I was finally figuring out how to use the Blood Angels on the table. With 2000 points to play with this time I had some new ideas I wanted to try out - let's talk about the list:

This is a Baal Strike Force - it means they get the Red Thirst rule which is a +1 initiative on the charge and can take 4 Elite choice, vs. the 3 of a normal Combined Arms Detachment. Most of their units have Furious Charge (+1 Strength on the charge) as a standard thing anyway. Swinging with a Strength of 5 at an initiative 5 means they go before most armies and hit harder than most as well so melee is definitely a place they want to be.

HQ

• Mephiston
• Librarian (with a jump pack, Mastery Level 2)

I really like Mephiston and had fun with him last game so I brought him in again. He will once again be riding the drop pod express. He has a bodyguard upgrade this time - more on that below.

I decided to double-down on psykers by bringing in a generic level 2 librarian. I wanted someone to accompany one of my Death Company squads so I gave him a jump pack. The priest had worked alright last game but the DC already has the Feel No Pain special rule which is the Priest's main benefit, so he doesn't add much to that unit. A psyker on the other hand adds a variety of useful buff powers so he made more sense this time.

I mean he's basically Dracula with power armor and a lightsaber - how can you not like that?
Also, remember that in 40K he's one of the good guys.

Troops

• Tactical Squad: A 5-man squad with bolters and a missile launcher
• Tactical Squad: A 5-man squad with bolters and a plasma cannon

I caved here. I've always been a "full 10-man squad" guy when it comes to tactical marines, from my original Howling Griffons (20 tac marines in two squads) back in Rogue Trader through my Crimson Fists (30 in 3 squads) to even my chaos marines (30 in 3 for my Iron Warriors too). It's a new age though and for the BA's tac marines are just not where the action is. All of the marine forces have formations now that reward taking multiple tactical squads in some way but none of them require full-strength versions. These typically require 3-6 of these squads so the incentive is to take minimum size units to get the bonus then spend your points elsewhere. The current BA version of this formation is nothing special but the Baal Strike Force is hungry for points for those 4 Elite choices. For this fight I went with the two minimum sized squads with a heavy weapon each. They can park on an objective or in cover and maybe contribute in some way.

Elites

• Death Company: A 7-man jump pack squad with two power weapons (accompanied by the Librarian)
• Death Company: A 7-man jump pack squad with two power weapons (accompanied by Dante - see below)
• Furioso Dread with a frag cannon and a heavy flamer in a drop pod (appeared in the last two fights)
• Sternguard veterans: An 8-man squad with 4 combi-meltas and 2 heavy flamers in a drop pod (accompanied by Mephiston)

This is a big chunk of the "hammer" part of the army. Two units of Death Company this time, both accompanied by a heavy-hitter. Jump packs give them speed, plus they are fearless and have Feel No Pain and 5 attacks each on the charge ... yeah. 

The always-good dread in a drop pod to clear a squad out of cover with triple templates. I expect one of these will be in pretty much every list I take from now on.

The biggest change here is the Sternguard. You don't hear a ton about them in most Blood Angels lists but they are in the book. They're legendary for being a drop-melta squad but they have uses beyond that. Their Special Issue Ammo makes them good against anything in the game. Being able to take a combi-weapon is a nice option, but being able to bring heavy flamers is good too. Their 2 attacks (along with all of the other BA boosts) means they can do some harm in assault as well. I think they have a lot of potential, and Mephiston will only make them better.

Fast Attack

• Assault Squad: 5-man squad with 2 melta guns plus two inferno pistols on the sergeant in a drop pod (also appeared in the last fight)
• Bike Squad: 3 bikes, 2 grav guns plus a combi-grav on a sergeant, and an Attack Bike with a multi-melta (altered since the last fight)
• Bike Squad: 3 bikes, 2 grav guns plus a combi-grav on a sergeant, and an Attack Bike with a multi-melta (altered since the last fight)

This is the rest of the "hammer" of the army. Despite their inability to kill the land raider last time, I still like the drop-melta squad. That can't happen every time, right? They are a much bigger threat than the classic multi-melta dread in a drop pod and give me 4 melta shots instead of just one. I think they're a must-take. 

The bikes have been reshuffled this time. Instead of one bigger squad (with fewer guns) I've split them into two squads and added multi-melta bikes as reinforcements. This makes them really nasty against heavy infantry and vehicles both. It's a little tempting to gear up those sergeants - make him a veteran, give him a power sword, and charge them into something since they are such a mobile unit but  I really want them to shoot things, not charge things, so I'm keeping him bare bones other than the grav weapon. 

Heavy Support

None! No devastators! No predators! No land raiders! This is unusual for me but I am learning.

Lord of War

• Dante, the chapter master of the Blood Angels

A chapter master leading a unit of death company - yeah! It might be overkill but he is a beast in melee and so are they so they should work well together. I've had a nicely painted mini of this guy for two years now and never gotten the chance to use him. With artificer armor, an iron halo, and Eternal Warrior he's not going down easy, and with Hit and Run he and his boys can go find another party if they get bored in any particular fight.

The plan

The tac squads, the bikes, and the DC all start on the board, with 3 drop pods waiting in reserve.

• The bikes are a shooting threat to almost any unit in a marine army so they each pick something and go for it, grabbing objectives as needed
• The tacs hold ground
• The DC target the biggest threats and begin jumping their way. I don;t care much about objectives with them - they are on the table to destroy things.
• Turn 1 the drop-melta assault squad pods in and wrecks a tank
• Turn 1 Meph and the sternguard pod in on the biggest other threat - tank or infantry or monster - and melta/special/flamer/psyker it off the board - this is my most flexible unit for both positioning (being able to land anywhere on the board) and ability to destroy any target
• Turn 2 (or whenever we roll him up) the Furioso pods in and erases a troublesome squad

The Fight

Blaster took most of usual faves - Blood claws + wolf priest in a land raider crusader, long fangs, couple of grey hunter squads, and this time he also added a pair of dreadnoughts. He also brought Logan Grimnar, chapter master of the Space Wolves, so there was a chance we could have two chapter masters going toe to toe in this fight.

I went second. I forgot to grab a pre-game pic of the field so we will open with the end of Turn 1:

You can see we already have a pretty good fight going on here. 

• At the top of the picture his grey hunters are behind the tower as my Dante-led death company move up towards them.
• On the right side my librarian-led death company have com over a bridge headed for the land raider
• The upper drop pod is my melta assault squad. They were aiming for the land raider but deviated ridiculously far and ended up over there. They opened up on that plasma cannon dread and managed all of 2 hull points. Again.
• The lower drop pod is the sternguard. They were kind of  a patchwork unit for this fight so there are red guys, blue guys, and Meph but that's all one squad. Meph has buffed the squad and then they blasted the raider and took off 3 (out of 4) hull points - gah! We did manage to immobilize the thing though. The yellow rings are crew stunned or something similar. 
• At the bottom of the pic that's a grey hunter squad on the ground and his long fangs up in the building. 

Here's another view of Turn 1 - one of my tac squads is in that red ruin at the left getting blasted by his long fangs. the other is out of frame in the woods at the middle of the bottom there. 

Turn 2

At the back of the field Logan Grimnar and his Thunder Hammer Storm Shield wolf guard terminators deep strike in. 

The inevitable swarm of blood claws gets the jump on my death company. My guys are not quite as strong when they don't get the charge so this is bad - my guys eventually go down under the weight of attacks here.

Both grav bike squadrons find themselves within range of Logan's squad. Zap zap!

Dante and the other death company leap in to the claws, determined to avenge their brothers.

The grand melee: In the center the long fangs blast the sternguard and blow several away. The plasma cannon dread torches the drop-melta squad who break and run. The grey hunters shoot more sternguard. The Blood Angels return the favor and finish them off. 

Turn 3

On Turn 3 the plasma dread charges Mephiston who points his trusty plasma pistol that way and ZAP! The dread goes down to an incredible overwatch shot that hits and glances, taking off his last hull point, dropping the armored wolf in his tracks!

The Furioso drops in with a goal of eliminating the long fangs. He drops in, moves up into the building, and BLAM BLAM WHOSH ... the long fangs are gone! Exactly as planned!

Logan's damaged squad blasts the tac marines in a desperate attempt to claim objective 5, then fails its charge. The tac squad kills one more terminator as the bikes close in.

On the BA turn Mephiston charges in and destroys the remaining wolf dread with his red lightsaber and Blaster concedes!

(That's two dreadnought kills on one turn for the psychic vampire BTW)

The VP total was only 4-2 but I was about to score Slay the Warlord and he didn't have much left on the table.  

 

Thoughts:

• Dropping a TH/SS unit with his warlord that far back seemed like a mistake to me. he had two cards that would score if he took objective 5 and that does matter but I don't know that would drop 400+ points that far away from the more intense part of the fight.
• The Furioso did exactly what I wanted him to do!
• Sternguard are awesome but they are fairly expensive tooled up like that. I may have to adjust them some in the next battle.
• Meph was a superstar just as I had hoped. I think he's my guy for medium to bigger fights
• It sucks when your death company get charged - but that's why you take two of them!
• The tac marines sat on objectives and took casualties. they didn't inflict much harm but they did their job.
• Drop pods are amazing but they don't always land where you want them to - that's why you take 3 of them! Or maybe 5 next time ...

I'll have more thoughts in the next post wrapping up the whole series and also what I'm going to do with the army next.

Something New for Monday: How Playing Cards are Made

Seemed appropriate with a Deadlands game starting up ...