Archeotech - OOC and General Discussion

[A.T.]

 

If she hits- Ravia isn't exactly a Space Marine...

 

Doing surprisingly well all things considered - didn't expect to have put this much damage on the steward.

I am out of tricks but it may be worth Ravia opening the round with a frag grenade at the construct (as Helene moved away a little last turn) - it won't do any damage but may trigger a dodge since previous grenades were krak grenades and that will give one last combo of chainsword and sniper before the bear gets here.

Then again that bear is going to be trouble with its speed...

[A.T.]

And Helene is dead, so it looks like plans have changed.

[Trokair]

 

And Helene is dead, so it looks like plans have changed.

 

I'll let Helene act before Varn's bullet storm hits home. A last act of Valour has certainly been earned, she just can't act on the knowladge that she is about to be betrayed. 

 

Edit: @A.T. just saw Aria's reaction post, if you want to edit in Helene's last action go ahead. 

 

Edited August 21 by Trokair

[A.T.]

ok, that's going to shake things up a bit - i'll redo the post.

 

Question as I am sure it will come up in the immediate future - the grapnel doesn't give a maximum speed for its motor (rate of climb) and I don't know exactly how far away the overhead gantries are.

Edited August 21 by A.T.

[Trokair]

Ok, since we do need an order of action this turn I will say that it is along the line of:

 

Helene normal action

Varn

Helene – Martyrdom and soliloquy (if so desiered)

Aria and Ravia in any order

Steward

Bear friend.

 

This gives Helene a final act of Zeal, and Arai an Ravia a chance to respond to Varn’s reappearance. Fair?

 

 

The ceiling is somewhere in the region of 50m up, with the gantries being a bit below that, say between 42m and 48m up depending on which particular gantry or walkway you are eying.

 

I am going to say that the rate of clime will be one full action per person. So this turn you could shoot the grapnel as a normal Bs action and assuming it hits you would then spend all of next turn going up and be free to act the following turn. If you choose to grab Ravia so that one grapnel/winch motor has to carry both of you then it will take two full turns to go up.

     

[A.T.]

ok - Helenes revised action is in, and having spent a few turns ineffectually whacking at the construct with her sword he hopefully won't be expecting this one (as the turn order means that Aria and Ravia can't help out - though if the Steward is still distracted by the flame effect that probably doesn't matter).

 

Looks like we are just outside of the Ursarchus charge range (but not run into combat range) so some options to play with.

 

 

(sorry for the slightly overcomplicated turn sequence resolution in Helenes post - I suspect all actions lead to the same final result at this point) :p

Edited August 21 by A.T.

[Trokair]

 

(sorry for the slightly overcomplicated turn sequence resolution in Helenes post - I suspect all actions lead to the same final result at this point) :p

 

No worries, it was certainly a sudden trun of events.

 

I will post in a little bit in the IC thread to smooth the narative along and then we can return to our regual scedualed game. 

[A.T.]

@Lord_Ikka - target rich environment for Ravia, but please don't frag grenade the Steward as Helene is in the blast zone and can't dodge on account of being almost entirely but not quite yet dead :p

[Trokair]

 

@Lord_Ikka - target rich environment for Ravia, but please don't frag grenade the Steward as Helene is in the blast zone and can't dodge on account of being almost entirely but not quite yet dead :p

given that the Steward is about 4m tall a headshoot should not hit Helene

[Lord_Ikka]

I wasn't going to frag the Steward in any case- the idea was to try to annoy the Ursarchus so that it focuses on Ravia and not Aria, giving her a chance to get away. Really our only chance is to have Aria run/warn the Arch-Magos so that the Steward and ship can be quarantined/destroyed. We aren't going to win the fight, but we're going down fighting!

[Trokair]

@Lord_Ikka, did you want to try and dodge any of Varn's shots? or are you saving the doge in case of worse damage this round?

[Machine God]

Does dodging count as movements ref unstable munitions? 

[Lord_Ikka]

Ah, I'll write something up later tonight. 

[Trokair]

 

Does dodging count as movements ref unstable munitions? 

 

Rules wise it will not here, the explosive might not be stable, but Ravia will know that and act with that in mind. Lord_Ikka can naratively decide that it does however and use a free action to drop it at any point and that would set it of. 

[Trokair]

So we have arrived at the end of Archeotech, A Treasure Hunt.

 

A big thank you to @A.T., @Lord_Ikka, @Machine God, @Petragor, @TechCaptain and @BadgersinHills for humouring me and playing, and a equaly big thanks @Lysimachus and @Mazer Rackham for GM support for this firsttimer. 

 

I hope you have all enjoyed you time in the game and that I was not too poor of a GM.

 

Any question, comments, complaints or other feedback welcome.

[Lord_Ikka]

Thanks for being the GM, I know it's a hard job and frequently unappreciated. I enjoyed playing a character out of my normal wheelhouse, so that is always fun!

[Mazer Rackham]

Well done to all the Players, and congratulations to @Trokair for masterminding and completing his first game in the Nook as a Games Master.

 

I'm sure there will be more treasure hunting in the future...!

 

Edited September 2 by Mazer Rackham

[A.T.]

Two years, how time flies when it comes to play by post.

 

I had thought by the way the party always seemed to have new gear slip through their fingers that we were going to find bits of usable archeotech here and there instead as story breadcrumbs - perhaps someone should have asked Varn earlier about the 'Sestas' he would mumble about from time to time :p

 

Did the plot go as planned or did we all run off in completely the wrong direction ?

[Trokair]

 

Thanks for being the GM, I know it's a hard job and frequently unappreciated. I enjoyed playing a character out of my normal wheelhouse, so that is always fun!

Glad to hear it.

 

 

Well done to all the Players, and congratulations to @Trokair for masterminding and completing his first game in the Nook as a Games Master.

 

I'm sure there will be more treasure hunting in the future...!

 

Indeed, and maybe next time we can bring your Feral World Rough Rider to proper life.

 

 

Two years, how time flies when it comes to play by post.

 

I had thought by the way the party always seemed to have new gear slip through their fingers that we were going to find bits of usable archeotech here and there instead as story breadcrumbs - perhaps someone should have asked Varn earlier about the 'Sestas' he would mumble about from time to time :p

 

Did the plot go as planned or did we all run off in completely the wrong direction ?

 

Indeed, I never intended the game to run this long, though that has as much to do with busy periods where play was slowed as with me underestimating the scope.

 

I think such a set up would have been more suited to a game world that was already a ‘adventure world’. That is to say everybody knows that there is treasure, the easy pickings are gone and it is now a case of finding what remains ahead of other adventurers in a more lawless environment. In this game there really was only the one treasure.

 

In answer to your question re plot, the party more or less went more or less where I had intend to steer the plot.

 

So, if I may, the general plot as planned at the beginning was that there are three sites of interest, the Lake, the Mountain and the Forest. Only one had treasure (it was always the mountain, though the nature of the treasure was also open for a while (more on tat in a moment)), one had something very different that had the potential to go completely of the rail if the party decided to abandon the treasure hunt for the other mystery (the lake) and the last one was a more mundane but more combat fouced encounter (the Forest site you never got to.

 

You could go for any of them in any order, but by placing the mountain between the others but slightly harder to get I was intending for you to go to one of the others as act two (of a three act story) and then go from there to act three and treasure. And that seemed to have worked.

 

Incidentally, had you gone to the mountain first then the mine would have been more involved and serve as act two while the ship part would have been massively extended as act three.  

 

You were also free to approach act one, the journey into an ambush in any way you wanted, I had even made some plans for a ship captain NPC (That Mazer really wanted to see in action) in case you headed to port in the starting location and hired a boat to travel by water as it would have been much faster than taking the great road.

 

I did have a few plans that never came to fruition, such as the act one ambush being a vehicle chase (mad max style even).

 

As mentioned back the mountain nwas always the treasure, and in fact the treasure was always a crashed ship, but the nature of the ship was initially a bit more open. It could have been a Heresy Era Mechanicum vessel (hence the Arch-Magos’s interest), or contain a Knight Household worth of  big stopy mechas (and in fact one of the players who did not end up playing was intending to have their character to be a lesser noble from a Knightly world in search of a glory outside of their native house, so that would have worked nicely), and lastly, the one I had toyed with the longest was a Men of Iron scenario that you did indeed get.

 

 So yes perhaps you should have asked Varn a few more questions, though in fairness Machine God did not know what was coming and just played really well into it.

 

I did not manage it for all characters, but I did try to incorporate something from their back-story/early characterization/ discussions with their players during character gen into the story.

 

For Example as you specifically wanted to play a Pariah as a guard against psychics I made the ‘bandit leader’ a latent psyker who gets freaked out and misunderstand the anti psyker effect.             

 

So yes Varns background as a native wild/tribes man happened to suited nicely but it was not planed specifically from the beginning.

 

All in all things kind of just worked out along the way.

 

 

And for those interested, the word doc that all the IC thread posts where prepared in (and some mechanical stuff for the OCC and such) is a smidgen over 69,000 words. So with all your IC posts we have written a novella together.  

 

[Trokair]

Random titbit I though you all might enjoy. Remember that map of Orealis at the beginning; well here is the full map. Plenty of places left to explore.

 

[A.T.]

 

Random titbit I though you all might enjoy. Remember that map of Orealis at the beginning; well here is the full map. Plenty of places left to explore.

 

Well, there were plenty of places left to explore :p

https://youtu.be/IEGo41443iI?feature=shared&t=40

 

Edited September 3 by A.T.

[Trokair]

 

 

Well, there were plenty of places left to explore :p

https://youtu.be/IEGo41443iI?feature=shared&t=40

 

 

Still are, the clock has not quite ticked that far yet, but that is a story for another day.