Trials and tribulations of a DH GM

[Olis]

Thanks Brother Nihm.

 

So... the first session. It pretty much involved zero GMing, which was anti-climatic. :D

 

Basically what we did, in between the late players and the, get this, fire drill (who the hell has a fire drill at 8pm?), was generate characters and skim through the rules. I was getting real positive vibes and my confidence was slowly inflating when the fire alarm went off, right in middle of my first expositional blurb. ;)

 

It took half an hour to get back to the table and by then we'd lost two players. We did agree to pick it up tomorrow though, so there's a silver lining here. I've already had one of my guys ask me what they should do first (while we were scuffing our shoes and talking mundanities), I told him anything he liked really. He could, if they so wished and found a way to, just leave the planet. They could possibly spend a session mugging plebs at the docks (or at least try to) but that'd probably be a bit dangerous for Level One Schmucks. He could go find a brothel if he really REALLY wanted (but I warned him I'd staff it with men or something). Anything at all. I'm learning to GM and improvising, I think, will help me no end at being spontaneously creative. Go nuts.

 

Ah well. Nevermind. I'll consider this dipping my toes in the water. :P

[Something Wycked]

Generating characters is a very important part of the process though ^_^ What is your party's makeup like so far?

 

From the sound of it, you intend to plonk your players down on a planet and let them... do whatever. Maybe this will work for your group.

 

It wouldn't work for mine ^_^

 

From my experience, the free-roaming "do whatever you want and I'll GM it" approach is best suited to powerful characters; see White Wolf's Exalted game for a great example of that. Rogue Trader is another good example- give a character a ship and a crew, and see where he goes with it and what he does with it.

 

With less powerful characters, its often better to give them a purpose so you steer them away from the power houses that can steamroll them. As an example for Dark Heresy, your players might be directed by their Inquisitor to find some human cultists and deal with them, then they find out later, or witness during the event, their Inquisitor and some Marines dealing with the Chaos Marines or Daemons or Xenos etc. that are connected to the cult.

 

But that's part of the fun- finding out what you and your group like to do. So have a go at the "do whatever you like" and see what they do with it, but don't be afraid to put the brakes on their revelry :D Use the boss-man Inquisitor to yank on their leashes and pull them to a problem he needs fixed.

[Olis]

Generating characters is a very important part of the process though :D What is your party's makeup like so far?

 

A guardsman, an assassin and a psyker. We had two additions tonight - a scummer and an arbitrator.

 

From the sound of it, you intend to plonk your players down on a planet and let them... do whatever. Maybe this will work for your group.

 

It wouldn't work for mine :D

 

Yup. Judging by tonights efforts I'd say it works for us. We had a fun time - our resident teenager did indeed turn out to be interested in attacking the odd NPC but I managed to turn that around whenever he did (at one point he burst into a toilet with a blade drawn, intending to accost somebody he'd been chasing and found himself face to face with our newly acquired arbitrator - who was NOT impressed!)

 

From my experience, the free-roaming "do whatever you want and I'll GM it" approach is best suited to powerful characters; see White Wolf's Exalted game for a great example of that. Rogue Trader is another good example- give a character a ship and a crew, and see where he goes with it and what he does with it.

 

With less powerful characters, its often better to give them a purpose so you steer them away from the power houses that can steamroll them. As an example for Dark Heresy, your players might be directed by their Inquisitor to find some human cultists and deal with them, then they find out later, or witness during the event, their Inquisitor and some Marines dealing with the Chaos Marines or Daemons or Xenos etc. that are connected to the cult.

 

But that's part of the fun- finding out what you and your group like to do. So have a go at the "do whatever you like" and see what they do with it, but don't be afraid to put the brakes on their revelry :) Use the boss-man Inquisitor to yank on their leashes and pull them to a problem he needs fixed.

 

They have a 'Handler' who will play a bigger role in the next session, I think I'll use him to reunite our party and find the Blackmarketeer 'L', or at least try to. Judging by what happened tonight I think my GM style is quite fast and loose - whether or not my guys realise that is a matter of perception on their part. :)

[Something Wycked]

Heh, all good choices. I'm particularly fond of Arbiters in Dark Heresy.

 

I'm glad it works for you- I'll be eager to hear how the story progresses :(

[Olis]

Well, so far they've split up (ending up as two groups at the end, one in a tavern, one returning to town after investigating a burnt down windmill), looked for fences (blackmarketeers), discovered a crazy old Redemptionist who was left WELL alone and generally did the usual travel and search technique. This is in an effort to find their one clue/contact: Lorinz.

 

Our scummer made an NPC brick himself trying to get answers out of him and eventually learned their Handler's name (Darrick Urn) before the NPC scarpered into a nearby tavern. Up until then he'd been alone as he had legged it into town when he heard a siren go off, separating himself from the others. The assassin found him as he was interrogating the NPC.

 

Considering this is a fetch quest (they need to find something that was stolen from their Inquisitor) they've caused all sorts of nuisance for the PDF, who're going to turn tavern into a free for all barroom brawl at the start of the next session. :)

[Something Wycked]

Hah, nothing like a good ol' bar room brawl to really set an adventure off on the right direction. Make it extra fun and throw in the Arbiters too :P

[Olis]

The more the merrier! :lol:

 

So, keeping things fun and all, anyone have any suggestions?

[Something Wycked]

The PDF aren't on "official" business at the bar- its just a sergeant and his squad (or whichever appropriate personage in your story has already been offended) and they're knocking on doors in the area to find your PCs. Some citizen tips them off to seeing them head into the bar, and in they go- spoiling for a fight and trying to pick one.

 

A brawl ensues- and the PC's start to get overwhelmed by the numbers of the PDF, and perhaps some of their friends in the bar too. Could even add some dirty tricks to the PDF playbook, if you want them to really be disliked by the players.

 

The Arbiters arrive on-scene with the sound of an APC grinding to a halt outside the bar, the door(s) crashing open (take your pick- Rhino or Chimera?) and a rush of boots on the ground, in synch, followed closely by them crashing through a couple brawling people near the door- shock mauls swinging.

 

It just so happens that the leader of this detachment of Arbites has a grudge against either the PDF as a whole or this sergeant in particular- and his men are directed to arrest the PDF troopers as the obvious culprits behind the brawl, with plenty of force. (If you want a big rivalry going on, feel free to maim some of the PDF soldiers, or even kill one- shock mauls aren't nerf bats.) The Arbite leader also has a keen eye for things- he can see that the PDF was targeting the PC's.

 

And you can do with that whatever fits your story best. Is the Arbite leader an undercover Inquisitional agent (and now they're in trouble)? Connected to your blackmarketers (dirty Arbite)? A friend of Lorinz? All of the above? :confused:

[Olis]

This is good stuff, I would've winged it (like I do) but seeing your post Wycked gives me an excellent narrative arc for the brawl. Consider the idea artfully 'borrowed', brother. :confused:

 

Anyone else?

[Something Wycked]

Glad you liked it :D I'm terrible at GM'ing because I have an odd sort of creativity- give me a blank slate like "Run us a game, Wycked." and I won't know what to do in the slightest.

 

Give me a seed of creativity, a starting point... Tell me you need a bar brawl, and out pour the ideas :confused:

[Inquisitor Hexx]

My best advice is don't waste time detailing encounters like a story would read. A lot of GMs plan their games by writing encounter A, which leads to B, to C, etc. The players are almost guaranteed to get through A and decide they want to go to 4 instead of B, and then you're in the muck.

 

Instead, just figure out what the key events are that you want to take place that session. Detail the event itself, but don't worry about where or when it happens. Just worry about what happens and importantly, what the repercussions are - what NPC reactions to the event are, how their perception of the PCs might be effected, etc.

 

With that information you can insert the key events where ever you want, so you can react to the players decisions and run with them while still ensuring your plot advances as you need it to. The players will love it since they really feel like they're leading the way instead of being pulled on a leash and you'll love it since you don't have to do half as much work to prepare.

 

Now in fairness, this method is a little challenging at the start of a game when nothing has been established yet but the longer the game runs the easier and easier it becomes. My Dark Heresy game is going on 2 years now and I hardly need to prepare for games anymore. I know the campaign and where it's leading, and I've dropped so many hooks and teases the players have another 2 years of seeds to explore without me adding any new ones. Where ever they go or whatever they decide to do I can easily play along with them and still insert the key events I know need to take place to get to the next stage of the game.

 

Hope that helps! :)

[Olis]

Fair enough, thanks Hexx. That advice fits perfectly with my style, and I 'm feeding my guys just enough rope at the moment...

 

You never know - this supposedly simple fetch quest might end up taking months! :)

[Inquisitor Hexx]

Np Olisredan, I hope the advice helps :lol:

 

Sometimes what seems like the simplest mission can take AGES to get through lol. I've had encounters that I thought the players would finish in half an hour and in the end it took like 3 full sessions to wrap up the scene. That's the fun of letting the players lead the campaign - you can never predict how things will play out!

 

Cheers mate

[Olis]

Exactly. They'll do all sorts of unpredictable shenanigans, so I just roll with it, with light, steering nudges, of course. :P

 

The Handler (Darrick Urn) I think might end up as a partial GMPC, if I feel they are farting about for too long in the arse end of nowhere. We'll see.

[Olis]

BEWARE: WALL OF TEXT. YOU WERE WARNED. :D

 

Sorry to double post but I'd thought I'd check in and give a run down of tonight's session. So, then, in the spirit of learning as we go we started the session learning what our quirks were and divination results, followed by learning about Fate Points and experience/buying skills/levelling up.

 

Once that had been done we moved on to the game. Both the scummer (Cliff) and the arbitrator (Steve) were unable to make it tonight so, considering they were with the assassin (Kes) at the tavern, they'd roughly follow his lead. The guardsman (Matt) and the psyker (Ed) were heading into town at the end of the last session so they'd be passing the tavern and (hopefully) go in. They didn't. They headed straight for the governor's mansion. Oh well... :rolleyes:

 

So, at the start for the assassin he decided to engage an offworld merchant in conversation but the merchant was having none of it. Then the assassin approached some newly arrived guardsmen (that he recognised from the last session) in off-duty garb. A botched Fel roll and the assassin has been punched to the ground in the inaugural round of the Olis's First Annual Burly Brawl. Now, I'll give highlights and tell you who was involved; first, there is five guardsmen vs the players, and then a local gang of five pitches in (intent on clobbering anything to do with authority) and finally an arbites squad (again, of five) who was "passing by" aid the players. In the corner, cowering behind his life guards, was the merchant (who didn't do anything because nobody came close enough to threaten him).

 

Thus the fist fight started (I forbade guns and bladed weapons). First up the guardsmen threw punches and grappled with the assassin and the scummer, but ultimately either missed or failed to do damage. Next the assassin tried to backflip away from the guardsmen and failed very badly, landing spread-eagle on the sawdust. The scummer grappled a guardsmen and got him in a chokehold. And the arbitrator landed a running right hook, knocking the sergeant clean out! Finally, for the first round, the gangers (literally) leapt into the fray, with two of their number braining themselves on the bar and and the others clubbing down a guardsmen. Obviously some of these guys had been drinking heavily!

 

Round two saw the introduction of the most useless arbites this side of the eye. Besides a couple of lucky hits they couldn't hit the floor tripping over, even if they tried! The remaining guardsmen managed to knock out a ganger but did little else but grapple. The assassin stuggled some with his assailant but did little else also. Cliff's scummer applied some pressure on his opponent who rolled 100 on a toughness test and promptly passed out. The scummer dusted himself down and returned to his pint (which he stayed with for the rest of the fight)! The arbitrator fished around for his ID and attempted to convince the arbites that the assassin, the scummer and he were good guys, or at least not the ones who started the fight. The gangers, true to form, ganged up on another guardsman when they weren't missing and clubbed him down too.

 

The next round saw the final guardsman get his leg shattered by the assassin and pass out while the gangers engaged the arbites. The arbites clubbed two gangers down in this round and the next for no loss, ending the First Annual Brawl.

 

Now, Matt's guardsman and Ed's psyker had, by the end of the fight, bluffed their way into the governor's mansion (wearing purloined uniforms) before splitting up and searching the grounds while attempting to more or less avoid attention. Ed's psyker (through psyniscience and dowsing) found a concealed trapdoor entrance to the astropathic relay tower and descended a flight of stairs where he found a thoroughly locked door (padlocked and sealed by number pad). Matt's guardsmen, however, after much faffing, befriended a guard, beat him senseless with a hammer when things went awry, and finally shot him point blank with his shotgun after stealing his uniform (and silken underpants). Seeing the now dead guard (which he wanted to impersonate) had a birthmark on his chest, Matt voluntarily took a wound to slash his chest where the birthmark would be. :D

 

Ed, in the meantime, had found out the code for the lock and blew the padlock off with his laspistol. However, in finding out the code Ed had rolled a 9 and had to roll on the psychic phenomena table; Banshee Scream. He was deafened for ten rounds, Matt was fine, everyone in the mansion was deaf for three rounds and everyone in town was deaf for two rounds.

 

Between the two of them they had set off the alarms in the mansion and by the end of the session Matt was imperonating a gate guard and Ed was entering the astropathic relay tower. Everyone else was still at the tavern.

 

For those of you who bothered to read the whole lot I congratulate your patience. :D

[Something Wycked]

Hah, thanks for the update, amigo. That's funny, good thing you didn't plan on my elaborate brawl scene eh? Was ruined in the first moments when those two decided not to go inside ^_^

 

I think I may have missed something, though. Why were they headed into the manion/astropathic relay?

[Olis]

No particular reason, afaik. ^_^ Intel gathering? A hunch? I dunno.

 

Also: Matt found out pretty late on but he finally twigged (as he was getting into the dead guardsman's gear) that the uniform he was wearing up until then had an interesting nametag on it: Janice Lorinz. Another rope-feeding clue. :tu:

[Demoulius]

heh sounds like a fun game ;)

[Olis]

Update time! (Yay.)

 

So then, today was rather momentous in terms of progress - the team have found Lorinz! Finally, after three sessions the team have found their contact/clue and have established she is also under the Inquisitor's employ.

 

Because the Psyker's player is away she basically spent the session staring into thin air and being deaf. The Arbitrator was also away so I ruled he was merely following the Assassin and Scummer (again). We acquired two more players for this session, Tim (the roleplayer) and the Scottish Bloke (I can't remember his name). Tim would be the Adept and Scotty (sorry) would be the Tech-priest, which fitted nicely as I had two spare pre-gens from before.

 

Now, as far as the session went the Tech-priest took charge immediately and became the de facto leader of the group as I managed to herd them all together with the Handler (it was bizarrely easy, funnily enough). Before the round up the Adept and the Tech-priest went to the Governor's Mansion looking for clues, I plonked another rope-feeder down in the shape of the Head Administrator of the planet (he had a MASSIVE handlebar moustache), who was wary, bordering on fear that if he talked too much he'd be in danger. He did manage to give the Adept an arbites dossier about Lorinz before politely shooing away the players. Later on the Adept would have the Tech-priest memorise the dossier before flushing it down a crapper. :D

 

Anyway, after much faffing the team (minus the Psyker) agreed to head to the known location of where Lorinz should be and, after co-opting some arbites, checked out her residence. She was in the attic dressed in a black bodyglove and a mask. After the expected light interrogation and the unceremonius dismissal of the arbites the players had learned there was an evil merchant cartel here-and-abouts that had what they were looking for. There was also word of possible xenos involvement. Maybe. :devil:

 

Bear in mind these are highlights - there was alot of menial stuff going on too. :)

 

 

Edit: Is anyone else reading this? Should I stop?

[Olis]

Hail gentlemen! Hail ladies! Hail fellow B&Cers! Apologies for the double post, however interest in how my group is doing has surfaced. So I'll give an update as best I can, what with our game on hiatus since before christmas and the length of time since our last sojourn in this thread. Sorry if this turns into a bit of a wall of text. ^_^

 

So, where do I start? Well, shall we say my group has completed their first mission. In fact they've completed their second, too. In the time that I've not updated this we've also lost two characters - The Psyker's player has moved to Derby, which led to the character being controlled by me until she was granted the Emperor's Mercy whilst under pursuit by a horde of zombies. The player responsible (he controls the Guardsman) has made a strange vow, pledging to be the cause of everybody else's death, one way or the other. Considering he's a crackpot, I'm not truly taking him seriously (unless he actually manages it). A cause for concern, in that regard, was the death of the second character (the Tech Priest) who was under the control of a Genestealer Patriarch - having attempted to distract the party from harming the Patriarch, the Tech Priest attacked the Guardsman. And missed. The Guardsman, hefting a scavenged Meltagun, melted the Tech Priest's face off. Everybody has been just a little bit more careful after that.

 

During the endgame of the first mission, two notable events occurred:

 

1) A massive shoot out between the players and their allies (another cell of operatives under my loose control) with the local mafia and some rogue PDF. This fight happened outside (inside and on top of) a vast warehouse at the docks, where the likes of explosive barrels, equipment crates, (un)friendly fire, collapsing buildings and an escape through an inferno all played a part. The escape itself leads me to -

2) Orbital Lander Conkers. Now, a game of conkers involves a horse-chestnut threaded onto a string and each players conker is swung at the other until one cracks and breaks off of the string. With that in mind let me paint a picture - the Guardsman (on the way back to the Landing Site) suggested playing conkers with the Orbital Landers at the spaceport. It was bonkers but sounded hilarious. In his group (the first to escape properly) was the Tech Priest whom the Guardsman convinced to attach one lander to the other via lifter cables and, believe it or not, to anger the lander-that-was-the-conker's machine spirit so the engine would go critical. Not entirely certain this was a great idea, I let things slide to see what would happen. With the majority of the group back on the Lander (the Assassin misjudged which vehicle was which and boarded the Conker :) ) they lifted off and began to smack the Conker into whatever choice targets they could get to - the Astropathic Tower, the Jail and the PDF barracks all recieved a proper bashing before the group dumped the stricken vehicle in the centre of the merchant district and flew off (after picking up the Assassin who had jumped onto a rooftop before the bashing began) before the engines went critical. The resulting explosion blew half of the principal city into dust and, once the range of the explosion had been determined, the mission was concluded. I felt that their Inquisitor would be quite narked with what had happened to the undercover mission...

 

In between the missions I declared the team had to make transit to the next world and were still considered "in training" by their Inquisitor because of the debacle the last mission had been. Aboard the destroyer Annapurna some warp shenanigans occurred including a day where everybody believed they were a commissar (and impersonating them is punishable by execution - guess what happened), a very scary moment where a minor daemon stalked the corridors of the ship and put a character in the medicae facility before being finally taken down by an old man, and the obligatory instance of time travel (which meant the ship exited the warp ninety-seven years after it left, oops :lol: ).

 

Mission two had to have a grander scope than mission one so I decided the team would have to go to the world of Hawk Vult, an imperial world gripped by a zombie plague (and fog) and attempt to cure the populace. Early on the only real moment of note was the death of the Psyker, who was moments away from zombifying (and was "leading them to us" as the Guardsman had pointed out). The mercy he gave wasn't just for her benefit, it seems. Over the course of the mission the team encountered a great multitude of zombies (and the odd zombie ogryn), Genestealers (mostly hybrids that hissed alot), a motley group of survivors (some of whom were pretty feckless) and a rogue Inquisitor. And by rogue, I mean mind controlled. Oh yes, and the team met their first true DMPC for this mission - a camo-cloaked Vindicare who had a penchant for shadowing the group and being deliberately vague with every answer and comment he had. The mission evolved as I grew bored over the weeks, shepherding the players towards doing something of note outside of bumbling about and massacring zombies, and so strange hunched creatures began to appear (the first being right git to kill :P) adding a little suspense that the zombies could never give. Eventually the players worked out these were Genestealer Hybrids (modified, of course) and, through alot of effort on my part, deduced there would be worse to find yet. When the Tech Priest was seperated from the group his player couldn't find the time to play so he was conveniently missing for a time before I introduced the character again (as a DMPC) when the team came across their first Patriarch. I had intended for them to knock him out or perhaps wound him, gravely even, to take him out of the picture while they tried to kill the Patriarch. Instead, his face was melted off. What with the character bereft of Fate points, he died very messily. His player wasn't pleased. :D With the sessions approaching christmas I was getting bored again, the players were not doing anything that could be described as trying to save the planet, so I upped the ante by offing the Inquisitor and (in a seperate session) blanking out all off world communication. One player got the message immediately. The others weren't far behind. A hive fleet was coming. Brown alert. The escape (something these guys were getting quite adept at) was a rather clean cut affair - after sucessfully stealing a valkyrie from what remained of the local guard garrison they made their way to the last transport off of the world, which just so happened to be a Rogue Trader's skiff, en route to the Rogue Trader's vessel. With that, the game was appropriately left there, the team fleeing the doomed world of Hawk Vult.

 

That's taken ages to write, so I hope you're happy, Ludovic. ;)

[Dosjetka]

You should have seen the look on my face when I saw that you had updated :)

 

I do appreciate it! :P

 

Ludovic

[Lord Heremes]

loving the fact that your updating this. Its giving me alot of insparation for my sessions of dark heresy. I find it kinda hard to play with my PC's as they are interested in the game and playing yet have no desire to really learn about 40k (as none of them has played it before), so i keep having to stop in the middle of our session to try and explain what the chaos gods/emperor/whatever other common knowledge most players have of the 40k backstory. Thankfully even with this gap in knowledge my PC's are still interested in the game it just takes forever to do anything. any tips on how to get around this?

[Something Wycked]

Always appreciate the updates, Olisredan :( You really ran with things, didn't you? :(

 

@Lord Heremes: there aren't really a lot of ways around it. You might try, instead of explaining things in detail, offer a parallel that they would be familiar with. EG, "What's a Vindicare?" could be explained as 47 from the Hitman games (but even more badass), or an ultra-elite modern military sniper, etc.

 

Also, you might try offering XP rewards for players who decide to educate themselves on 40k lore. It will be easy for you to apply, too- you don't award it for "Hey, I read some stuff about... Things. And stuff." Instead, award it for coming to your "rescue" and explaining things to the other players when the group comes upon something that needs explaining.

[Olis]

No problem, Ludovic. I had a harder time remembering it than writing it. ;)

 

 

any tips on how to get around this?

 

Well, as Something Wycked suggests you could try to have a "mentor" bonus, with more well read up players helping provide lore to the less well initiated - it'd lighten the load on your shoulders and help the others have an incentive to find things out on their own so they can score more experience.

 

My suggestion would be to have an earmarked DH rulebook to hand (earmark the main parts that have background and lore for the players, earmark the rules for yourself). And also, outside of gaming sessions ask the players if there is anything about the background that they are fuzzy with - hopefully the answer won't be a catalogue of stuff. ;)

 

Oh, and much as many of us (including me on occasion) malign Lexicanum for any innacuracies or ommissions, it is certainly good enough for those players not acquianted with the background to learn much. A nudge for your players in this direction might help some. :)

 

Always appreciate the updates, Olisredan :( You really ran with things, didn't you? :lol:

 

Oh yes, I did indeed. :D I've grown quite accustomed to rolling with things and having minimal literary prompts. I've noticed the best fun comes from winging it and just going with slightly odd plans. For example - the whole "everyone's a commissar" incident ended up with the Guardsman causing the deaths of a whole macro-battery crew, I did give him insanity points after that, though, along with more points for the other terrible moments he's involved in (the character is really quite eccentric now).

[Shoggoth]

Sounds like you have a very "quick and dirty" style of running a game, which isn't necessarily a bad thing at all. Makes for a flexible and fast pace game usually. It's pretty much been my style of running a game the last....damn, I'm getting old.... 21 years or so. (In my defence a cousing got us into gaming at the tender age of 8, at about 12ish we realized HD and HP weren't the same thing ;) )

 

Sounds like you've got a lot of players. Personally I prefer to stick with a maximum of 5 players unless I know everyone in the group well, and if we go over 5 we usually need to be a bit strict when it comes to OT topics at the gaming table. But if I've learned anything it's that it's usually best to run a game the way you're comfortable, trying to mimic a style of storytelling that doesn't suit you rarely yields great rewards.

 

If you have trouble getting the party to link up, how about a running battle? I had problems with a wayward assassin (the player hates authority and isn't that much of a team player, but a damn fine roleplayer nonetheless so we keep him in) who kept sneaking around avoiding everything. So I introduced him to the local counterintelligence unit (they were undercover in a hostile city). After a running battle through the docks and slums he stumbled into the rest of the PC's with 2 wounds remaining and 3 angry agents on his heels. Needless to say he promptly made contact and stayed in contact after that :lol: