[BC] A Vulgar Display of Power: OOC/Discussion Thread

[A.T.]

Valeyards full answer TBC - i'm not sure I have anywhere suitable to lead him (particularly if the plot requires we stay here rather than going off and being space pirates) - so the alternate approach will be to either hint at his shadow or move to another location using his knowledge of the place that would out Abraxus through some peculiarity of its construction or inhabitants.

[Necronaut]

I'll address some of the questions that have cropped up: 

 

1. Oswyld, Abraxus and Valeyard can certainly interact with one another as each of you sees fit (and please continue to do so). I did *sort of* set up the current scenario out of convenience, given the unwittingly shared set of circumstances regarding Valeyard and Oswyld (which I rather liked and will attempt to make more use thereof in the near future). Abraxus, having inserted himself, is of course welcome to join in more directly if he's not feeling too shy. ;)

 

2. Regarding stealth in power armour: I believe this is an oversight in the BC rules that there is no Stealth penalty incurred by wearing power armour. I have played it both ways in the past (and I forgot to address this earlier, so sorry about that), but practically speaking wearing a half-ton or more of ceramite and steel armour with a miniature power plant in the backpack *should* make an awful lot of racket. All that said (doubly sorry about this @Lord_Ikka), going forward there will be a -30 penalty for sneaking around in said armour per the ordinary arrangement. If your character possesses Stealth at +10, however, I would be willing to allow them to gain access to the Guerrilla Training talent (Deathwatch: First Founding, p. 18) at a cost of 500xp (Tier 2, Unaligned Talent) to compensate for this in the future. I hope everyone is amenable to that.

 

3. @Lord_Ikka we'll let your current stealth roll stand as-is since I'm imposing this restriction ad hoc, but not ex post facto. If you want or feel the need to shift any starting character purchases around to account for this late change, since you effectively built your character to be more of a sneakie beakie, please shoot me a DM and let's see if we can work out something equitable. Otherwise you have something tasty to work towards xp-wise.

 

4. Regarding the aforementioned stealth and awareness tests posted thus far to notice one another, those can all stand as-is. You are all roleplaying as beings that are more than a cut above the hoi paloi, and would juatifiably stand out to one another.

 

5. @A.T. I do have some fun things planned, but this campaign is probably going to be more character-driven (both short- and long-term) than what we have previously done on this board. I'm trying to give you guys the space to narratively and mechanically explore this little hell-hole in whatever way your characters would see fit, and I will oblige each of them with encounters and challenges to thwart them along the way. Those with strong desires and well established personal goals may drive the party bus along more than those that don't for the time being. Like I said before, there are no right or wrong answers here. If you and the other players desire more direction or structure, I can happily provide.

 

6. @Petragor I will get to you ASAP, along with @Trokair. Also I completely forgot about your cerebral enhancements! Expect more "fun" challenges in the future! 

 

 

Hopefully that answers some or most of the questions you guys have put forward? As an aside and for some transparency (not that I want to publicly air my grievances or solicit pity): I have had a persistent sleep issue for the past couple of months which has left me with a near-constant level of brain-fog and fatigue, making my life a bit difficult to say the least. I will be starting some sort of treatment soon and hopefully I will be able to get past this, which will likely greatly improve my ability to create updates in a more timely manner. Please continue to bear with me.

 

Edited October 3, 2023 by Necronaut

[Lord_Ikka]

Its all good- Abraxus will work up to the better Stealth via Guerilla training.

[Lysimachus]

Sorry to hear that mate, it's horrible when you can't think straight! 

 

 

So, re: points 1 and 5, I had been writing Oswyld's grandiose goals and plans as filler until we got moved into the 'proper' storyline of this adventure...

 

But is the idea more that we are free to create stuff ourselves for our dudes to go and do? e.g. like I'm assuming AT came up with the idea of finding the more important bad guys at this Grand Observatory place? (very cool idea, btw! )

 

 

Re: the power armour vs stealth stuff, I was sure I'd read somewhere that mk6 was built for smooth movement and so didn't get penalised as heavily as other marks when trying to move quietly… but I'll be damned if I can find it anywhere now! 

Maybe it was one of the Armour History bits or something… anyone remember anything like that?

 

 

[Necronaut]

@Lysimachus I was having a similar thought regarding the Mk VI armour and then remembered that it confers an Agility bonus when wearing said armour suit (per Rites of Battle). I might need to actually give the Raven Guard talent a bit more thought, in retrospect, but it'll probably be fine. This is supposed to be a vulgar display of power, after all.

 

Otherwise please proceed with your grandiose scheming and bloviating until your plans intersect with reality. Your character's motivations are obvious (in a good way) for a seasoned renegade Astartes commander, and fit well within whatever might constitute an overarching story for this game.

[Machine God]

Necro - Are you having problems with your text? Black text on a Black background is very hard to read at work, it'll probably be the same on my laptop.

 

It's not great for the Old Mk I Eyeball you see to be having to read with your face an inch from the monitor.

[Necronaut]

@Machine God terribly sorry about that -- I had a big block of text paste in the wrong color and I haven't been able to sit down at my computer to repair the damage. I will fix it this evening my time.

[Necronaut]

@Machine God & everyone else: I have found a work-around and purged the scrap code from my prior post(s). Board-friendly formatting is back in play. Sorry again for that!

Edited October 9, 2023 by Necronaut

[Necronaut]

@A.T. who's this Admiral Nubanon fellow? Sorry if I wasn't clear about this earlier: the intent at this stage of the game is for you lot to explore and interact with the world a bit and allow me to dribble in some plothooks and what not for you and do our world building somewhat in-situ. I would ask that you please not make up the world wholecloth around yourself, barring random people you might pass on the street or characters from your back stories as many of you have done thus far. As for the factional control of Desolace: I will grant you that there's a fair bit of that, but Vaarsaal is the master of this particular hunk of rock and everyone else kowtows to him or gets spaced, as a general rule. Of course, the position of any would-be Lord of Chaos is often tenuous at best, so there are undoubtedly people who would like to see him gone, and should there be an Admiral Nubanon, he might be one such individual. That said, I do like the idea of the Observatory and will incorporate that as a point of interest. I am trying to be flexible without biting off my than I or you can chew.

 

My intent here is not to hand all of you a large dossier of whos-who within Desolace or the greater Vortex -- your characters will need to figure that out more or less as they go, organically if you will. You're not a bunch of Deathwatch marines who are handed a mission briefing before shipping out, nor are you a unit of Guardsmen being deployed to a meatgrinder warzone with clear objectives, so if you or your character are unsure of where to go or what to do, go chat up the locals, ply them with drink, threaten them with physical harm, attempt to summon a daemon (you lunatic!), or any other number of things that most or all of you have already done thus far to learn the lay of the land. If you're unsure of what your character might know about Desolace or anything else, I can recommend various Common or Forbidden Lore tests to get you pointed in the right direction without meta-gaming in your existing knowledge of the 40K universe as players of the game. If you haven't formulated a strong reason for why your character would have come here save for following his strange dreams, that's perfectly acceptable, and their motivations may develop as time goes on.

 

Is everyone okay with that? If not, I am happy to shift gears a bit and interfere more directly.

Edited October 9, 2023 by Necronaut

[A.T.]

37 minutes ago, Necronaut said:

@A.T. who's this Admiral Nubanon fellow? Sorry if I wasn't clear about this earlier: the intent at this stage of the game is for you lot to explore and interact with the world a bit and allow me to dribble in some plothooks and what not for you and do our world building somewhat in-situ.

 

Post adjusted :p

 

 

[Necronaut]

@A.T. cheers mate.

[Xin Ceithan]

Hello everyone - I‘m sorry report that I am having some exceptional busy weeks currently, mostly due to seemingly everyone apparently intend to battle Grandfather Nurgle head-on instead of embracing his gifts as any reasonably enlightened heretic should… hopefully it wilsort itself out overthrow next few days… 

 

Good news is that my superiors finally agreed that I won‘t be working through whole nights anymore from next year on, which should improve my situation considerably 

[Petragor]

@Necronaut rolled my first Loyalty Check, let me know if there should be a difficulty modifier on that.

As for Ollkyrax' meeting, my intention was to finally go meet our employer or warlord or what have you, but I did leave it deliberately vague if you don't think the time is nigh quite yet.

[Lysimachus]

I think Abraxus gets 2DoS for that in BC, 1 for passing and 1 for being +10 over?

 

Which means Abraxus and Oswyld have the same success in hiding vs. spotting... not sure how that gets resolved... does the GM call it, maybe?

 

Edit: Or... Abraxus passed by 15, Oswyld by only 12, so maybe he stays hidden for now?

 

 

 

 

Edited October 17, 2023 by Lysimachus

[A.T.]

27 minutes ago, Lysimachus said:

Which means Abraxus and Oswyld have the same success in hiding vs. spotting... not sure how that gets resolved... does the GM call it, maybe?

 

Page 37

Tied opposed tests are either a stalemate (neither side wins) or a reroll until someone does - GMs choice.

[Necronaut]

Players,

 

Sorry for my absence. I have not had any bandwidth for checking the boards and progressing our story these past two weeks. I'm wrapping up the conceptual phase of a substantial project at work and will be going on a bit of a break from that starting later this month. Thank you all for taking the initiative to keep moving things along, and yes the stealth/perception contest re-rolls were the correct course of action. I will be monitoring things from the command center here and I am working on an update for the characters who require it. Again, I apologize profusely and beg for your mercy. If we can all hang on a couple more weeks my free time will open up noticeably.

 

Thanks.

[Petragor]

So, I’m guessing Ollkyrax needs to wait for the others before getting to the meeting? Just wanna be sure that I’m not supposed to be doing anything yet

[Lysimachus]

I'm going to hold off on posting anything until after AT gets a chance to roll for Navigation.

 

Oswyld does have Nav (Surface) though, so although his Int isn't very high, he could give an Assist to Valeyard if that allowed?

[Necronaut]

2 minutes ago, Petragor said:

So, I’m guessing Ollkyrax needs to wait for the others before getting to the meeting? Just wanna be sure that I’m not supposed to be doing anything yet

 

Ollkyrax may do as he pleases! Oswyld, Valeyard and Abraxus are headed to petition Vaarsaal for an audience, but there's nothing formal here. The pirate lord is holding court, so if Ollkyrax wants to start hoofing it in that direction for whatever his reasons, I won't stand in his way.

[Petragor]

2 minutes ago, Necronaut said:

 

Ollkyrax may do as he pleases! Oswyld, Valeyard and Abraxus are headed to petition Vaarsaal for an audience, but there's nothing formal here. The pirate lord is holding court, so if Ollkyrax wants to start hoofing it in that direction for whatever his reasons, I won't stand in his way.

I’m just still a little confused about the “Summons” you mentioned that we’d all received in the first IC post. Did Vaarsaal send those out? What’s the deal?

[Necronaut]

Maybe he did, and maybe he didn't. It's a spooky myyyyyystery!

 

<Waggles fingers>

Edited November 25, 2023 by Necronaut

[Petragor]

OK, good to know. We’ll say Ollkyrax’ meeting will be with the Pirate Lord or one of his Lieutenants or something if that’s alright with you. Should be a nice way to bring the party together No?

[Necronaut]

Sounds good to me!

[A.T.]

35 minutes ago, Lysimachus said:

Oswyld does have Nav (Surface) though, so although his Int isn't very high, he could give an Assist to Valeyard if that allowed?

 

Going to be needed - Valeyard doesn't have the navigation skill so the 23 I rolled isn't going to cut it otherwise.

[Lysimachus]

Oh! I assumed he must have that Skill from Necro's instruction?

 

In that case, GM, can we use Oswyld's stat for the test, and just narrative it as Valeyard leading the way?

 

Oswyld's Int of 32 is probably a lot lower than Valeyard's, but at least he can test at full Stat rather than half! (In fact, AT's above roll of 23 would be a Success!)

 

 

Edited November 25, 2023 by Lysimachus