Warhammer 40K; Dark Heresy
I realize I haven’t posted anything for a really long time. I have my reasons. I wrote this e-mail to Jordan today and CCed myself. Since it doesn’t require me to write about the shitty happenings of my actual life…you can read about one of the good things. That being the Warhammer 40k RPG I’m playing with the guys.
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Perhaps I went about this all wrong. Thus far I have treated it like any other RPG I've done with the guys or even online. I have a particular habit of pouring most (or all) of my creative energy into a single character to the point where most everything else is forgotten. I'm thinking that this time around that may have been a mistake. Why?...oh it's pretty simple really. You shouldn't get attached to your character. Hmm? Why is that?
Because the Warhammer 40K universe hates you.
It hates you, it hates your friends, it hates your family, it hates your home. Hell…if you had a puppy it would hate that too. We had joked about this fact leading up to last night…but I don't think any of us quite realized the extent to which it was true. The universe is really out to get you. It's almost like the game is routing for you to die a grisly death. I think D is planning to write up the session in more detail on his blog…but I figured I could give you a rundown of the happenings of our latest adventure.
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Let's see…first of all you should meet our colorful cast of characters. There's me, Roth Bruul (I love the charts for randomly generating a name). I'm a 6ft tall, 200lb, muscular brute of a man, with dark skin, red hair, blue eyes, and filed teeth. I are not a nice looking person…which is great!...because I live in Warhammer 40k-land. >_> I'm an "assassin" by profession…but really the character is just a guy who'll kill someone if the price is right. The only thing “sharp” about me is my teeth or maybe my shoty-sword. In my background I established that he's basically a feral-worlder who escaped his planet in search of booze, money, women, and power (kind of like Conan the Barbarian)…he's a mass murderer and a wanted fugitive. Good times huh? =P Next up there's Titus Agrippa…that's Jess' Arbitrator. Not sure if you know about the Arbitus…but it's basically like Judge Dredd. They're kind of like cops…but with more power. He's not as built as my character and honestly I can't remember much of his features. His background involves the fact that he was a gutter urchin taken in by an Arbitrator…raised him like his own son yadda yadda. After dear old dad retires…Jess' character basically discovers that he's joined a cult. Even though it's kind of harsh (40K lawl) he goes to the chief and rats out his dad. Like a Bad Boys movie with Will Smith…he gets the chief to assemble a task force and they roll out to bust the cult members. Due to circumstances we haven't really decided (or roleplayed out) when they get there they find the results of a gory confrontation. Basically my character is standing in the middle of a room full of dead cultists. Extremely pissed that I've botched his shot at heroism...Titus has no qualms arresting me. Low and behold they find out I'm wanted for several things including multiple killings, the attempted murder of a planetary governor, and escaping from and killing other authority figures. To save face he offers to escort me back to my home system for prosecution and an extremely likely execution. On the way though…Titus gets a call.
The Inquisition (more specifically a certain Inquisitor) has selected him to become an Acolyte. He's to report immediately to a ship bound for a certain sector whose name I can't recall. Instead of just killing me…Jess' character decides that death would be the easy way out. The Inquisition is not a happy profession and doesn't have a long life expectancy. He rigs the explosive collar around my neck to an internal heart monitor on his person. Basically the deal is if Titus' heart stops…my character dies (also if he gets farther than 1000 meters away from him). He basically tells Roth to earn his freedom by keeping him alive. It makes for an interesting dynamic. =P Jess and I worked all this crap out on Tuesday when I went over there. I think we did pretty well for short notice. The Inquisitor didn't ask for Roth though…so it's going to be interesting when the group actually meets him next session. Lol
Moving on…the two of them arrive at the same time as the other members of the Inquisitor's new Acolyte team. Everyone begins to gather in the galley and heads start to butt. Well…my character starts butting heads. I get the ball rolling by literally shoving Andy's character away from the food so I can get at it first. Andy's character…much like you would expect…is your classic military-infatuated Guardsman. He's slightly shorter than my character and less built so it was kind of funny to shove him around. Adien, the ex-Cadian White Shield, was gearing up for karskin training when his father pulled some strings (against his wishes) to get him into the Inquisition. Andy is playing him as a tried and true, by the book soldier boy…which works. During the confrontation Albert's character approaches us. He's a very slight, unremarkable-looking man from a hive colony…but he carries a fancy rifle (and honestly isn't that all that matters in this world?). I forget his actual name because Albert's character insists on people calling him by his nickname "Spike". Spike introduced himself essentially as a higher class contract killer (also an assassin). My character remarked that "Well I've never heard of you…besides you don't look like you've ever even killed a man." To which Spike responded "Well that's the point." We got into a slight dispute because Albert's character prefers killing in secret and from a distance…while my character would rather have you smell his bad breath before he slits your chest apart.
Lastly there was…well I can't remember his name because he said all of like two things the whole night. Brett's tech priest is being played…well…basically like a tech priest. They really don't like to speak to, or even associate with regular people. I would say Brett just doesn't want to interact but that's usually not the case. I imagine the priest with a heart of steel will soften up a bit in the future. For the most part though he just stood there and watched us interact.
You might have noticed I left someone out (maybe not). Aryen…who was supposed to play our psyker…sent a very short text message to Jess about the time we were supposed to start at 6:30. It basically said "Go on without me…I can't make it." Man I thought D was going to strike him down with his own mental powers. Andy ended up calling him to see what the deal was (I mean it's not like we haven't been planning this session for over a month). Aryen says that he has an interview tomorrow with some company…and he needs to spend the night studying his German and Spanish. I have no idea how long he's known about this interview…but it sounded like for a while. Not only that but I believe he said he might miss the next session too. None of us were really amused (especially D because he has certain parts of the campaign designed around us having a psyker). We weren't about to hold off on this for another week.
Anyways…
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On route to their training…the Inquisitor sends them a message. There's an emergency situation on a mining world that the Inquisition needs to investigate. They're the only affiliated people within close enough proximity to respond. He tells them to meet up with the Commissar and handle the situation (at least until others can arrive). There's quite a bit of roleplaying and plot exposition when we land. We're originally under the impression that there was a revolt by the peasant miners holed up inside of the mine shafts. The longer we stay there and the more people we talk to…the more it sounds like something else is going on. There was one especially demented chap that wouldn't stop babbling about eyes, tentacles, and blood. Wish I could remember his name. We talk to several Guardsmen and a few superiors…survey the camp…you know. Standard stuff. Eventually we get our meeting with the Commissar. My character mistakenly takes the secretary for the Commissar and when we finally meet the actual guy…Albert is saved from a swift execution (for being a bit too brash) by a godly dice roll. Needless to say the Commissar is disappointed in whom they sent (having already lost 6 squads in the mine in addition to having to seal it off). He gives us some supplies and sends us in anyway.
They lock us inside the mine (it takes about an hour to open and shut the giant seal using massive Ogrin looking creatures). It doesn't take long for things to start getting fucked up. We get to a door that's been welded shut from the outside. While they bicker about how they might be able to get it open…I shove them out of the way and charge into it with my shoulder. A lucky strength role results in me hitting it hard enough to break the welds. Inside is a mass of horribly mutilated bodies…blood, guts, etc. Kind of a precursor to the rest of the evening really. At this point I was feeling alright. We hadn't really run into anything bad yet and we passed our first rolling challenges without a hitch (Jess managed to scale a pile of rocks with his bare hands to secure a rope…even though he isn't trained in climbing).
Sadly our first major obstacle wasn't a monster or a group of rogue miners…it was a hole. That's right. A hole in the floor…a giant crack in the rock. It dropped down about 10 meters and was about 8 feet to the other side (too far to make without jumping). Jumping, like climbing, has its own rules. Titus volunteers to make the jump across to secure the rope…but my character is like "You're not going anywhere law man. You fall down that hole and my head might explode." So being the bold person he is…Roth tries to make the jump…and fails the roll miserably.
Now failing an important roll is bad in Warhammer…as I've said…the universe hates you. I had no idea how bad it would hurt my character to fall down this hole…but I didn't want to find out. I took a chance and used a fate point. The creators of this game decided to give you an emergency button. How nice of them. >_>; Every character gets a certain number of fate points when they roll their character. These points can be used to re-roll any dice roll in a session…and they regenerate once an in-game day. If you run out of fate points…you can "burn a fate point" (by reducing your maximum count by one) and still get a re-roll. I have three fate points (unusual for a feral-worlder)…so I figured it might be good to use one. I did and I succeeded my second roll. When D told us that falling into the hole would have made us take a ridiculous amount of damage…I was really glad I did.
The next encounter also started out amusing. My character (being the close-quarters brawler) was naturally leading the group. Well Jess was using the map…I was just standing in front with my weapons drawn. Our first stop is a room at the end of a short hallway…a hallway full of dismembered bodies with still-glistening organs visible. Yuuum. We get to the door (locked) and I force it open. Inside is a lone miner cowering in the back of the room. His name is Rat and he's the only apparent survivor of the massacre. He's babbling almost as bad as the soldier from earlier. Titus, Adien, and Spike start trying to question him: "Are you alone?" "Who did this?" "Where are they now?" "Where did the fighting take place?" etc… Well my character's patience is not his strongest point…and the sniveling Rat was wasting their time. So…I just rolled my dice and said "I hold my revolver to his head and fire." D (and most everyone else) were kind of like "Wha huh?!" I think D was more pleased than anything else. It served as a good reminder that we're playing 40k and not D&D. D had to look up the rules for damage for the first time in the night so that was fun. Much like in the new Conan MMO there are different hit regions and different results for damage based on what kind it is (impact, rending, explosive, etc). I did enough damage to poor Rat's head that everyone that was standing next to him had to roll agility to avoid being hit in the face by the gore when his head popped like a ripe melon. =P Titus and Spike failed and were not happy with me. Titus more so that I fired a gun while we still had the drop on whatever was in the mine.
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WARNING: SOME STAT BITCHING AND GAME EXPLANATION FROM HERE ON (it’s a part of RPing sadly)
We moved on to the next area though…a few of us succeeding our roles to hear something…feeding. Jess has Titus toss one of our grenades into the room and succeeds in severely pissing off the thing inside. It charges us and we all get ready to do battle with this horribly mutated Guardsman. But wait!...first D tells us to make a fear roll. I was kind of like…"Really?..." Turns out that a fear roll requires you to roll under your Willpower stat to succeed and not be afraid.
Well I looked it up just now and Willpower is defined as "Willpower demonstrates your character's ability to withstand the horrors of war, the terrors of space, and the awfulness he is bound to encounter in his missions". Now it should be noted that when rolling a character you get certain bonuses and penalties to your stats based on what kind of world you come from. Now tell me this…why would a person from a feral world (some of the nastiest places ever) get a neg to willpower? I mean my character is only 26 and he's old for his world. They wake up every day to the possibility of a giant creature eating them or a rival tribe slaughtering them. Evidently though they can't take the pressure. >_> Strange situations make them too uncomfortable.
Bah! Anyway… to get your feral characters WP…it's 2d10+15. I even rolled pretty well. I got 11+15 for a total of 26 (the most anyone can have naturally is 40). Now the way W40K works is that on any test you have to roll under a number instead of above. That means everything from attacking to driving a fucking car. So in this case that means that if something pops up that's "scary"…I have to roll a d100 under 26. That's essentially a 3/4 chance I'm going to fail. And for every 10 (a degree of success/failure) that I fail by…the failure gets worse.
I think when this mutant appeared I rolled like…an 84. 84-26 = 58 or 5 degrees of failure. That meant that I was scared and I had to make another roll to determine exactly how frightened I was…and add 50 to it. I rolled a…66 I think. So my total fear roll was like 116. Then the DM goes to his chart…and here's what happened: I faint for 1d5 rounds. Upon waking up I am still shaken and suffer a -10 to every roll I make for the rest of that encounter. I also give myself 1d5 insanity points.
Insanity is another matter. Basically for every 10 insanity points you accrue your character gets a little more unstable (even to the point where they suffer fears and phobias). Once you get to 100 points?...your character basically is unfit to carry out everyday functions and leaves the campaign. Thankfully the more insanity points you have the more desensitized you become. As in…something that scared you with 10 insanity points on you might not scare you when you have 20.
Back to the "action" though. Well I'm kind of irritated because I failed so hard. I added all 5 insanity points (yea I rolled a 9 which is 5 when divided by 2 and rounded up) and passed out for 3 rounds of combat. Jess failed too but less hard. He was merely frozen in place until he made a successful WP roll on one of his turns. The bad news?...Jess and I are the guys who stand in front. The creature charges Titus and hits him for like 14 dmg to his chest. That's crazy. Jess only has like 10 wounds of damage he can take. His armor and toughness however let him shrug off 6 of it (3 for his toughness bonus and 3 for his flak vest). Normally he'd get a chance to dodge or parry but he was frozen in fear. >_> So let me put this into perspective for you. Of the two guys that actually have some melee competence…one is unconscious and the other almost got ripped in half. In fact he's so wounded now that he's taking extra penalties to his future rolls (which make breaking out of the fear even harder). Andy's Guardsman misses his shots and so does Brett…thankfully Albert got some good rolls and hit him twice over the next two rounds (combined with the damage from the grenade that was enough to kill it).
Needless to say my character is not happy when he snaps out of it (remember we have it set so that if Jess dies…I die too). I'm kind of pissed that the ruthless barbarian mass murderer I'm playing…passed out like a pansy at the first sign of a monster. Works great as far as the rules are concerned…but as for my roleplaying it looked kind of silly. Well we continue on and find ourselves ambushed by a group of four "lesser mutants". They are evidently not scary enough to make us roll fear. Turns out they heard our grenade go off and got a surprise attack. Best thing ever?...we changed the marching order so the injured Titus sat in the back. Well the mutants appeared behind us. Two of them charge Jess and I'm pretty sure he would have died had I not remembered something in the rules.
You see primitive weapons (blades, clubs, claws, etc) get a neg to attacking something with modern armor on. So not only was Jess' guy not as hurt as he was before…but he was shrugging off the attacks of these mutants and their crowbars. Hooray! So instead of having Jess die we were better off than we were before.
We mopped up the mutants without much incident…though I did fail an incredibly easy roll that pissed me off. I had to roll under a 68. That's close to a 3 in 4 chance of success. I rolled like an 88. >_< I missed the guy with my shotgun at point blank range. Bah! My second shot killed him instantly though and the other three went down fast. Pressing on we walk down a long corridor with two rooms at the end. Looking at the map we decide to investigate the smaller one first. Evidently the contents of this room are so completely grotesque and gory that we actually have to make another fear role. I think someone else failed by a little…but I didn't care…cause I failed hard enough again to pass out. I PASSED OUT AGAIN! Wtf? I even used a fate point to try and not fail…but I STILL FAILED. What's even better? I rolled max on my insanity points and added 5 more to my total. Since I hit 10 I gained a level of insanity and got a neg on my rolls for like 12 hours (or basically the rest of the session). Since we weren't in combat though I didn't have to wait to wake up. I was getting less happy about this fear rule.
Well inside the bigger of the two rooms was a generator…leaking highly explosive liquid fuel. Brett succeeded in a roll that informed us that hitting that fuel with a bullet would cause an explosion large enough to kill us all instantly. Hooray Brett! Just to make the situation better…there was another mutant basically playing in the stuff. This one seemed a lot more horrible than the other ones we encountered (but we didn't have to make a fear roll…wondering if D skipped it). Anyway we all beat it on initiative and get to go first. I roll the worst and go last…the thing is already unconscious when it gets to be my turn so I just walk up and "curb stomp it". With everything else explored we move to the end of the mine. When we get there we see a giant, pink pulsing shaft of crystal running up from the floor into the ceiling. It's a powerful warp-related thing…so D says "Everyone make a Toughness roll and add +30 to it. God help you if you fail." I think…well toughness is one of my highest stats (like 36) and with +30 I have to just roll under a 66. Not too bad. Well I rolled a 76. I was the only person to fail. I was like "screw this…I'm using a fate point" I swear I rolled like a 88 or a 98 on my redo. I could not succeed. D just kind of shook his head and said roll a d5. I rolled a 1…I was so happy. Evidently though this table was bad no matter what you rolled…because this table was for mutations. I was told that my skin became disfigured and turned a shade of pink (along with my hair). I was so pissed. I didn't even want to continue on. Why?
You see in 40k world…mutations are not accepted. There are very few rare exceptions. Getting one is basically like getting a death sentence. I was basically saying "GG everyone".
It got better though. Moments later a daemon appeared! A real one…not just a mutant (it was a follower of the Plague guy). Well obviously this is the most horrible thing we've ever seen. MAKE A FEAR ROLL! I of course failed…but only by one degree this time (still got 4 more insanity). Jess and Andy however failed hard and they both passed out. Brett failed about as much as I did and we were both frozen in fear until we made a successful roll. Albert's assassin was the only guy that could actually act. It was bad. We probably should have wiped. D started making concessions though. First he ad-libed the script (this was a preconstructed mission) and said the crystal was pulsing like a heart. The daemon was also tired from traveling through the warp and couldn't act in the first round. Brett and I failed our rolls and Spike made an accurate shot and hit the crystal (cracking it). The daemon recovered from its fatigue. I managed to actually break out of fear with a lucky roll and shattered the crystal with a shot from my revolver before it could attack any of us. The daemon was sent back to the warp and we all survived…hooray.
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D didn't want the Commissar to execute me upon leaving the cave for being mutated…so he made me roll a toughness check again (which I passed this time…thank the God-Emperor) and said that the effects of the crystal slowly began to fade. It was totally made up but it kept me from having to re-roll a character. We exited the mine, debriefed the Commissar, and headed off to get our "official Acolyte training". Lawl
D gave us each 400 exp and a reward to Brett, Andy, Jess, and Me for various things we did during the session. I opted to have 3 of my insanity points removed… Why? Because the only other way to get rid of them is to spend 100 exp PER POINT! How stupid is that? I actually might ask him if I can add the insanity back and just add 3 to my Willpower… >_<
So there you have it. Our first session.
It was a lot of fun and the system is very intuitive. I know I complained a lot and had a hard time with most everything…but I was just rolling really really bad. D does his best though not to just completely bone us…for now at least. I don't like the way fear works (I think it's overpowered)…but D says that mission was designed as a one-shot for pre-made characters that had higher stats than ours. Hopefully we won't be scared 3 times in every session…
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Perhaps I went about this all wrong. Thus far I have treated it like any other RPG I've done with the guys or even online. I have a particular habit of pouring most (or all) of my creative energy into a single character to the point where most everything else is forgotten. I'm thinking that this time around that may have been a mistake. Why?...oh it's pretty simple really. You shouldn't get attached to your character. Hmm? Why is that?
Because the Warhammer 40K universe hates you.
It hates you, it hates your friends, it hates your family, it hates your home. Hell…if you had a puppy it would hate that too. We had joked about this fact leading up to last night…but I don't think any of us quite realized the extent to which it was true. The universe is really out to get you. It's almost like the game is routing for you to die a grisly death. I think D is planning to write up the session in more detail on his blog…but I figured I could give you a rundown of the happenings of our latest adventure.
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Let's see…first of all you should meet our colorful cast of characters. There's me, Roth Bruul (I love the charts for randomly generating a name). I'm a 6ft tall, 200lb, muscular brute of a man, with dark skin, red hair, blue eyes, and filed teeth. I are not a nice looking person…which is great!...because I live in Warhammer 40k-land. >_> I'm an "assassin" by profession…but really the character is just a guy who'll kill someone if the price is right. The only thing “sharp” about me is my teeth or maybe my shoty-sword. In my background I established that he's basically a feral-worlder who escaped his planet in search of booze, money, women, and power (kind of like Conan the Barbarian)…he's a mass murderer and a wanted fugitive. Good times huh? =P Next up there's Titus Agrippa…that's Jess' Arbitrator. Not sure if you know about the Arbitus…but it's basically like Judge Dredd. They're kind of like cops…but with more power. He's not as built as my character and honestly I can't remember much of his features. His background involves the fact that he was a gutter urchin taken in by an Arbitrator…raised him like his own son yadda yadda. After dear old dad retires…Jess' character basically discovers that he's joined a cult. Even though it's kind of harsh (40K lawl) he goes to the chief and rats out his dad. Like a Bad Boys movie with Will Smith…he gets the chief to assemble a task force and they roll out to bust the cult members. Due to circumstances we haven't really decided (or roleplayed out) when they get there they find the results of a gory confrontation. Basically my character is standing in the middle of a room full of dead cultists. Extremely pissed that I've botched his shot at heroism...Titus has no qualms arresting me. Low and behold they find out I'm wanted for several things including multiple killings, the attempted murder of a planetary governor, and escaping from and killing other authority figures. To save face he offers to escort me back to my home system for prosecution and an extremely likely execution. On the way though…Titus gets a call.
The Inquisition (more specifically a certain Inquisitor) has selected him to become an Acolyte. He's to report immediately to a ship bound for a certain sector whose name I can't recall. Instead of just killing me…Jess' character decides that death would be the easy way out. The Inquisition is not a happy profession and doesn't have a long life expectancy. He rigs the explosive collar around my neck to an internal heart monitor on his person. Basically the deal is if Titus' heart stops…my character dies (also if he gets farther than 1000 meters away from him). He basically tells Roth to earn his freedom by keeping him alive. It makes for an interesting dynamic. =P Jess and I worked all this crap out on Tuesday when I went over there. I think we did pretty well for short notice. The Inquisitor didn't ask for Roth though…so it's going to be interesting when the group actually meets him next session. Lol
Moving on…the two of them arrive at the same time as the other members of the Inquisitor's new Acolyte team. Everyone begins to gather in the galley and heads start to butt. Well…my character starts butting heads. I get the ball rolling by literally shoving Andy's character away from the food so I can get at it first. Andy's character…much like you would expect…is your classic military-infatuated Guardsman. He's slightly shorter than my character and less built so it was kind of funny to shove him around. Adien, the ex-Cadian White Shield, was gearing up for karskin training when his father pulled some strings (against his wishes) to get him into the Inquisition. Andy is playing him as a tried and true, by the book soldier boy…which works. During the confrontation Albert's character approaches us. He's a very slight, unremarkable-looking man from a hive colony…but he carries a fancy rifle (and honestly isn't that all that matters in this world?). I forget his actual name because Albert's character insists on people calling him by his nickname "Spike". Spike introduced himself essentially as a higher class contract killer (also an assassin). My character remarked that "Well I've never heard of you…besides you don't look like you've ever even killed a man." To which Spike responded "Well that's the point." We got into a slight dispute because Albert's character prefers killing in secret and from a distance…while my character would rather have you smell his bad breath before he slits your chest apart.
Lastly there was…well I can't remember his name because he said all of like two things the whole night. Brett's tech priest is being played…well…basically like a tech priest. They really don't like to speak to, or even associate with regular people. I would say Brett just doesn't want to interact but that's usually not the case. I imagine the priest with a heart of steel will soften up a bit in the future. For the most part though he just stood there and watched us interact.
You might have noticed I left someone out (maybe not). Aryen…who was supposed to play our psyker…sent a very short text message to Jess about the time we were supposed to start at 6:30. It basically said "Go on without me…I can't make it." Man I thought D was going to strike him down with his own mental powers. Andy ended up calling him to see what the deal was (I mean it's not like we haven't been planning this session for over a month). Aryen says that he has an interview tomorrow with some company…and he needs to spend the night studying his German and Spanish. I have no idea how long he's known about this interview…but it sounded like for a while. Not only that but I believe he said he might miss the next session too. None of us were really amused (especially D because he has certain parts of the campaign designed around us having a psyker). We weren't about to hold off on this for another week.
Anyways…
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On route to their training…the Inquisitor sends them a message. There's an emergency situation on a mining world that the Inquisition needs to investigate. They're the only affiliated people within close enough proximity to respond. He tells them to meet up with the Commissar and handle the situation (at least until others can arrive). There's quite a bit of roleplaying and plot exposition when we land. We're originally under the impression that there was a revolt by the peasant miners holed up inside of the mine shafts. The longer we stay there and the more people we talk to…the more it sounds like something else is going on. There was one especially demented chap that wouldn't stop babbling about eyes, tentacles, and blood. Wish I could remember his name. We talk to several Guardsmen and a few superiors…survey the camp…you know. Standard stuff. Eventually we get our meeting with the Commissar. My character mistakenly takes the secretary for the Commissar and when we finally meet the actual guy…Albert is saved from a swift execution (for being a bit too brash) by a godly dice roll. Needless to say the Commissar is disappointed in whom they sent (having already lost 6 squads in the mine in addition to having to seal it off). He gives us some supplies and sends us in anyway.
They lock us inside the mine (it takes about an hour to open and shut the giant seal using massive Ogrin looking creatures). It doesn't take long for things to start getting fucked up. We get to a door that's been welded shut from the outside. While they bicker about how they might be able to get it open…I shove them out of the way and charge into it with my shoulder. A lucky strength role results in me hitting it hard enough to break the welds. Inside is a mass of horribly mutilated bodies…blood, guts, etc. Kind of a precursor to the rest of the evening really. At this point I was feeling alright. We hadn't really run into anything bad yet and we passed our first rolling challenges without a hitch (Jess managed to scale a pile of rocks with his bare hands to secure a rope…even though he isn't trained in climbing).
Sadly our first major obstacle wasn't a monster or a group of rogue miners…it was a hole. That's right. A hole in the floor…a giant crack in the rock. It dropped down about 10 meters and was about 8 feet to the other side (too far to make without jumping). Jumping, like climbing, has its own rules. Titus volunteers to make the jump across to secure the rope…but my character is like "You're not going anywhere law man. You fall down that hole and my head might explode." So being the bold person he is…Roth tries to make the jump…and fails the roll miserably.
Now failing an important roll is bad in Warhammer…as I've said…the universe hates you. I had no idea how bad it would hurt my character to fall down this hole…but I didn't want to find out. I took a chance and used a fate point. The creators of this game decided to give you an emergency button. How nice of them. >_>; Every character gets a certain number of fate points when they roll their character. These points can be used to re-roll any dice roll in a session…and they regenerate once an in-game day. If you run out of fate points…you can "burn a fate point" (by reducing your maximum count by one) and still get a re-roll. I have three fate points (unusual for a feral-worlder)…so I figured it might be good to use one. I did and I succeeded my second roll. When D told us that falling into the hole would have made us take a ridiculous amount of damage…I was really glad I did.
The next encounter also started out amusing. My character (being the close-quarters brawler) was naturally leading the group. Well Jess was using the map…I was just standing in front with my weapons drawn. Our first stop is a room at the end of a short hallway…a hallway full of dismembered bodies with still-glistening organs visible. Yuuum. We get to the door (locked) and I force it open. Inside is a lone miner cowering in the back of the room. His name is Rat and he's the only apparent survivor of the massacre. He's babbling almost as bad as the soldier from earlier. Titus, Adien, and Spike start trying to question him: "Are you alone?" "Who did this?" "Where are they now?" "Where did the fighting take place?" etc… Well my character's patience is not his strongest point…and the sniveling Rat was wasting their time. So…I just rolled my dice and said "I hold my revolver to his head and fire." D (and most everyone else) were kind of like "Wha huh?!" I think D was more pleased than anything else. It served as a good reminder that we're playing 40k and not D&D. D had to look up the rules for damage for the first time in the night so that was fun. Much like in the new Conan MMO there are different hit regions and different results for damage based on what kind it is (impact, rending, explosive, etc). I did enough damage to poor Rat's head that everyone that was standing next to him had to roll agility to avoid being hit in the face by the gore when his head popped like a ripe melon. =P Titus and Spike failed and were not happy with me. Titus more so that I fired a gun while we still had the drop on whatever was in the mine.
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WARNING: SOME STAT BITCHING AND GAME EXPLANATION FROM HERE ON (it’s a part of RPing sadly)
We moved on to the next area though…a few of us succeeding our roles to hear something…feeding. Jess has Titus toss one of our grenades into the room and succeeds in severely pissing off the thing inside. It charges us and we all get ready to do battle with this horribly mutated Guardsman. But wait!...first D tells us to make a fear roll. I was kind of like…"Really?..." Turns out that a fear roll requires you to roll under your Willpower stat to succeed and not be afraid.
Well I looked it up just now and Willpower is defined as "Willpower demonstrates your character's ability to withstand the horrors of war, the terrors of space, and the awfulness he is bound to encounter in his missions". Now it should be noted that when rolling a character you get certain bonuses and penalties to your stats based on what kind of world you come from. Now tell me this…why would a person from a feral world (some of the nastiest places ever) get a neg to willpower? I mean my character is only 26 and he's old for his world. They wake up every day to the possibility of a giant creature eating them or a rival tribe slaughtering them. Evidently though they can't take the pressure. >_> Strange situations make them too uncomfortable.
Bah! Anyway… to get your feral characters WP…it's 2d10+15. I even rolled pretty well. I got 11+15 for a total of 26 (the most anyone can have naturally is 40). Now the way W40K works is that on any test you have to roll under a number instead of above. That means everything from attacking to driving a fucking car. So in this case that means that if something pops up that's "scary"…I have to roll a d100 under 26. That's essentially a 3/4 chance I'm going to fail. And for every 10 (a degree of success/failure) that I fail by…the failure gets worse.
I think when this mutant appeared I rolled like…an 84. 84-26 = 58 or 5 degrees of failure. That meant that I was scared and I had to make another roll to determine exactly how frightened I was…and add 50 to it. I rolled a…66 I think. So my total fear roll was like 116. Then the DM goes to his chart…and here's what happened: I faint for 1d5 rounds. Upon waking up I am still shaken and suffer a -10 to every roll I make for the rest of that encounter. I also give myself 1d5 insanity points.
Insanity is another matter. Basically for every 10 insanity points you accrue your character gets a little more unstable (even to the point where they suffer fears and phobias). Once you get to 100 points?...your character basically is unfit to carry out everyday functions and leaves the campaign. Thankfully the more insanity points you have the more desensitized you become. As in…something that scared you with 10 insanity points on you might not scare you when you have 20.
Back to the "action" though. Well I'm kind of irritated because I failed so hard. I added all 5 insanity points (yea I rolled a 9 which is 5 when divided by 2 and rounded up) and passed out for 3 rounds of combat. Jess failed too but less hard. He was merely frozen in place until he made a successful WP roll on one of his turns. The bad news?...Jess and I are the guys who stand in front. The creature charges Titus and hits him for like 14 dmg to his chest. That's crazy. Jess only has like 10 wounds of damage he can take. His armor and toughness however let him shrug off 6 of it (3 for his toughness bonus and 3 for his flak vest). Normally he'd get a chance to dodge or parry but he was frozen in fear. >_> So let me put this into perspective for you. Of the two guys that actually have some melee competence…one is unconscious and the other almost got ripped in half. In fact he's so wounded now that he's taking extra penalties to his future rolls (which make breaking out of the fear even harder). Andy's Guardsman misses his shots and so does Brett…thankfully Albert got some good rolls and hit him twice over the next two rounds (combined with the damage from the grenade that was enough to kill it).
Needless to say my character is not happy when he snaps out of it (remember we have it set so that if Jess dies…I die too). I'm kind of pissed that the ruthless barbarian mass murderer I'm playing…passed out like a pansy at the first sign of a monster. Works great as far as the rules are concerned…but as for my roleplaying it looked kind of silly. Well we continue on and find ourselves ambushed by a group of four "lesser mutants". They are evidently not scary enough to make us roll fear. Turns out they heard our grenade go off and got a surprise attack. Best thing ever?...we changed the marching order so the injured Titus sat in the back. Well the mutants appeared behind us. Two of them charge Jess and I'm pretty sure he would have died had I not remembered something in the rules.
You see primitive weapons (blades, clubs, claws, etc) get a neg to attacking something with modern armor on. So not only was Jess' guy not as hurt as he was before…but he was shrugging off the attacks of these mutants and their crowbars. Hooray! So instead of having Jess die we were better off than we were before.
We mopped up the mutants without much incident…though I did fail an incredibly easy roll that pissed me off. I had to roll under a 68. That's close to a 3 in 4 chance of success. I rolled like an 88. >_< I missed the guy with my shotgun at point blank range. Bah! My second shot killed him instantly though and the other three went down fast. Pressing on we walk down a long corridor with two rooms at the end. Looking at the map we decide to investigate the smaller one first. Evidently the contents of this room are so completely grotesque and gory that we actually have to make another fear role. I think someone else failed by a little…but I didn't care…cause I failed hard enough again to pass out. I PASSED OUT AGAIN! Wtf? I even used a fate point to try and not fail…but I STILL FAILED. What's even better? I rolled max on my insanity points and added 5 more to my total. Since I hit 10 I gained a level of insanity and got a neg on my rolls for like 12 hours (or basically the rest of the session). Since we weren't in combat though I didn't have to wait to wake up. I was getting less happy about this fear rule.
Well inside the bigger of the two rooms was a generator…leaking highly explosive liquid fuel. Brett succeeded in a roll that informed us that hitting that fuel with a bullet would cause an explosion large enough to kill us all instantly. Hooray Brett! Just to make the situation better…there was another mutant basically playing in the stuff. This one seemed a lot more horrible than the other ones we encountered (but we didn't have to make a fear roll…wondering if D skipped it). Anyway we all beat it on initiative and get to go first. I roll the worst and go last…the thing is already unconscious when it gets to be my turn so I just walk up and "curb stomp it". With everything else explored we move to the end of the mine. When we get there we see a giant, pink pulsing shaft of crystal running up from the floor into the ceiling. It's a powerful warp-related thing…so D says "Everyone make a Toughness roll and add +30 to it. God help you if you fail." I think…well toughness is one of my highest stats (like 36) and with +30 I have to just roll under a 66. Not too bad. Well I rolled a 76. I was the only person to fail. I was like "screw this…I'm using a fate point" I swear I rolled like a 88 or a 98 on my redo. I could not succeed. D just kind of shook his head and said roll a d5. I rolled a 1…I was so happy. Evidently though this table was bad no matter what you rolled…because this table was for mutations. I was told that my skin became disfigured and turned a shade of pink (along with my hair). I was so pissed. I didn't even want to continue on. Why?
You see in 40k world…mutations are not accepted. There are very few rare exceptions. Getting one is basically like getting a death sentence. I was basically saying "GG everyone".
It got better though. Moments later a daemon appeared! A real one…not just a mutant (it was a follower of the Plague guy). Well obviously this is the most horrible thing we've ever seen. MAKE A FEAR ROLL! I of course failed…but only by one degree this time (still got 4 more insanity). Jess and Andy however failed hard and they both passed out. Brett failed about as much as I did and we were both frozen in fear until we made a successful roll. Albert's assassin was the only guy that could actually act. It was bad. We probably should have wiped. D started making concessions though. First he ad-libed the script (this was a preconstructed mission) and said the crystal was pulsing like a heart. The daemon was also tired from traveling through the warp and couldn't act in the first round. Brett and I failed our rolls and Spike made an accurate shot and hit the crystal (cracking it). The daemon recovered from its fatigue. I managed to actually break out of fear with a lucky roll and shattered the crystal with a shot from my revolver before it could attack any of us. The daemon was sent back to the warp and we all survived…hooray.
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D didn't want the Commissar to execute me upon leaving the cave for being mutated…so he made me roll a toughness check again (which I passed this time…thank the God-Emperor) and said that the effects of the crystal slowly began to fade. It was totally made up but it kept me from having to re-roll a character. We exited the mine, debriefed the Commissar, and headed off to get our "official Acolyte training". Lawl
D gave us each 400 exp and a reward to Brett, Andy, Jess, and Me for various things we did during the session. I opted to have 3 of my insanity points removed… Why? Because the only other way to get rid of them is to spend 100 exp PER POINT! How stupid is that? I actually might ask him if I can add the insanity back and just add 3 to my Willpower… >_<
So there you have it. Our first session.
It was a lot of fun and the system is very intuitive. I know I complained a lot and had a hard time with most everything…but I was just rolling really really bad. D does his best though not to just completely bone us…for now at least. I don't like the way fear works (I think it's overpowered)…but D says that mission was designed as a one-shot for pre-made characters that had higher stats than ours. Hopefully we won't be scared 3 times in every session…