UK Games Expo'10 #4. Winding up and wending home

Birmingham geek-out!
My travel plans on the Monday after the Expo gave me a day to spend in Birmingham. I deposited my luggage at the station then pondered my options: was I going for the cultural day out, or the geek day out? I chose the latter, naturally enough (no slur intended on the cultural attractions of the fair city of Birmingham I assure you dear readers, this option just proved easier to pursue on the day).

Who goes where?
Decision made, I set off to visit the local GW as is my wont when I'm on my travels. Luke- the staffer on duty, gave me the familiar friendly GW greeting when I arrived. I gave him my card and told him the story of my trip to Birmingham, then we fell to chatting. Answering the usual questions, I told him that I'm a DIY Space Marine Chapter Master and filled him in on some of Penumbra's Talons' background. I talked about how Belon (the Talons' home world remember) is located in the Eastern Fringes, which is where it's all going down in the Dark Millenium these days:

• There are rumours that the protracted death of the Emperor on his Golden Throne has reached a point where the Astronomicon- upon which depends all human interplanetary travel, no longer reaches the Eastern Fringes; or that it is at least weaker and less reliable than ever.
• The imminent Deathwatch RPG is to be set in the Jericho Reaches: located in the Eastern Fringes, and the target of a major Imperial Crusade aiming to reconquer lost Imperial worlds.

Little did I know what I was letting myself in for all those years ago when- on a simple whim, I plumped for the Eastern Fringes as the location for the home of my lads.

UK Games Expo'10 #3. Games to the left of them, games to the right of them

A weekend of lovely stuff
With trade stands and demo tables spread through 6 halls in the Clarendon Suites there was plenty to keep me busy on Saturday before the Combat Commander tournament, and on Sunday. I had to exercise a measure of restraint at the trade stands this year because I was hauling my own luggage home by train, which gave me an added incentive to pass the time playing as many games as possible.

Cubicle 7
My first definite port of call on Saturday was the Cubicle 7 stand, located in the Gold Zone (where I'd later play my first game of Dominion). I was a man on a mission: I wanted a copy of the new superhero RPG Wild Talents, which I'd seen in the Expo programme because it'd been nominated for 'Best New RPG' in the Expo Awards. The stall was very busy so I only had time for a brief exchange of pleasantries with Angus Abramson before moving on.

First grand "Roll dice and kick ass!" prize draw!

Spring is here and we're all celebrating long days and bright sunshine. As RD/KA!'s small contribution to these annual festivities I'm announcing my first ever prize draw.

Late extra!
Bill King's return to the Black Library to write a Warhammer Fantasy trilogy about legendary Elf heroes Tyrion and Teclis will be news only to those of my readers who don't follow the Black Library blog or other F&SF news sites, where the news broke back in February.

Bill is of course best known for his 7 Slayer novels, featuring dwarf slayer Gotrek Gurnisson and his human poet companion Felix Jaeger; and for his 4 Space Wolf novels, featuring Ragnar Blackmane. He may have 2 major characters to whom the phrase 'pointy ears' is simultaneously a term of abuse and a target designation, but writing about elves isn't new to Bill. He co-wrote with Andy Chambers the 4th edition Warhammer Armies: High Elves, in which he created most of what remains the canonical account of Tyrion and Teclis. And he wrote about the 40K Eldar in the novel Farseer.

Mad March roundup #2. Grand geek gathering!

The place
Conpulsion 2010 took place last weekend in the Teviot Row students' union at Edinburgh University, as Conpulsion always does. The "oldest purpose built student union building in the world", Teviot Row is a place of which I have fond memories from the 1980s: I used to play a lot of Defender there- badly; the student wargames club used to have monthly games days there; and it was there- at a FilmSoc showing, that this lifelong fan of classic Trek first saw Star Trek: The Motion Picture.

Teviot Row: the front entrance

You can imagine then, dear readers, that I was keen to see what Conpulsion made of this place so redolent of memory for yours truly. The short answer is that I was impressed.

Web 2.0 and tabletop roleplaying #1: the past

A big day for all concerned?
World-historical anniversaries are all very well but today also happens to see my 400th post here @RD/KA!, so I've been racking my brains trying to think of a topic suitable to highlight this latest small landmark in my bloggery. What could be more apt I decided, than a subject which has its roots in my halcyon days- the 1980's; about which I wrote right back when this blog was but a stripling; which represents furthermore one of my major unfulfilled aspirations as a roleplayer?

Phase 1: "When ah were a lad..."
My fascination with what Web 2.0 can offer tabletop roleplayers is rooted in experiences predating the invention of the World Wide Web itself. It all began, naturally enough, with Katana: Sword Against Evil™, that renegade ninja who has set out to destroy the Evil that spawned him.
(Graphic via Trends in the Living Networks)

My 2010 gaming wishlist #3: Roleplaying

Looking back
The bad
That definite hankering which came upon me earlier this year gnaws away at me ever more insistently, and yet we didn't get any roleplaying going. Why? Short form: there wasn't enough interest around the table for me to want to change tack with a successful boardgaming group. Long form: well, therein lies the rub.

Readers with more than passing roleplaying experience will be well aware that clashing playstyles and other social dynamics are core issues which can confound a roleplaying group. They are also very personal issues since they arise from the relationships between friends. Tempting as it was therefore to sound off a GM's frustrations here @RD/KA!, I could never escape the realisation that any such roleplayer's bitching in which I felt like indulging should be kept strictly face-to-face. It's only fair after all.

Worldbuilding & HERO #1: Brass tacks

Vast open expanses?
Worldbuilding- AKA. subcreation, is an essential feature of roleplaying; a creative endeavour in which many players- GM or otherwise, love to indulge. As readers will be well aware, this places roleplaying games squarely in a cultural trend the 20th century great grandaddy of which is J.R.R. Tolkien's Middle Earth. (Map via: geektyrant.)

The history of subcreation in our own culture of the fantastic is not my subject here, but I cannot pass by without mentioning Greg Stafford's Glorantha. Best known as the setting of the RPGs Runequest and HeroQuest, Glorantha is unusual among RPG settings in that it wasn't a gaming setting at all when it was first created; unusual, but not unique- M. A. R. Barker's Tékumel was the same. The only adventure gaming settings I can think of which might rival these extraordinary creations in their subcreationist breadth and depth are GW's Warhammer Old World and 40K Dark Millenium.

Pwnage and ownage

A bloglag starting with a long weekend visiting family has stretched out to more than twice as long as that thanks, above all, to the 'block'. Efforts to break on through had finally awakened a glimmer, but it was still a slog. Thank goodness then for Badger's visit last night.

Glorious carnage!
This phrase could so easily've applied to dinner as much as to the games that followed. I was cooking haddock with bacon and mushrooms, one of my favourite quick recipies from Good Food for Busy People- a book which delivers exactly what it says on the cover. Tasting while stirring everything together for the final five minutes' cookoff I immediately knew something was wrong. Sure enough, I had grabbed the wrong jar of red powder from my spice cupboard: those 2 added teaspoonsfuls of paprika were actually cayenne pepper; a disaster in the making on a par with the great pepper catastrophe of 2008.

Geekish grab bag!

As I said on Friday, I want to celebrate the latest small landmark in the life of RD/KA! by looking to what the future might bring for this geek and his games.

Memoir'44
Regular readers will know that Badger and I have recently taken a break from our 2½-year Combat Commander odyssey. We'll be returning to this great game for sure (there're scenarios still unplayed and more to come); and then there'll no doubt be a taste of Chad's next WW2 tacsim- Fighting Formations: Grossdeutschland Infantry Division; but not before we've indulged our taste for Conflict of Heroes.

Superior tacsims all though these games are (or promise to be), none are intrinsically more exciting than Memoir'44; nor do they relegate the game from its well-deserved status of light wargame to some nether region of little or no interest to this grognard. Days of Wonder themselves are doing their bit to maintain interest in the game, with their planned December release of Memoir'44 Battle Maps Vol. 3: Sword of Stalingrad, featuring:

• 2 Overlord scenarios.
• 2 Standard scenarios.
• Summary cards for the previously published Battle Maps and Mediterranean Theater expansion.
• Additional cards for in-game play - the new Combat Deck (see above) specifically designed for urban warfare (DoW News centre).

A definite hankering...

It's been a long time since I did any roleplaying, and longer still since I've GM'ed. There are various reasons for this, but they all boil down to two in the end: dissatisfaction and weariness.

My WFRP campaign ran for about 30 sessions over a period of some 16 months, ie. roughly every other week on average. I wasn't a seasoned GM, and I'm not really the seat of the pants type either, which meant that I put a lot of work into those games, not including the write ups here at RD/KA! (Keynote was a godsend!). In the end it was all too much for me. I was worn out.

What was more, I wasn't getting the satisfaction I wanted from the game. As I explained to the lads one night while we were eating dinner before a game with Bill: playing boardgames with Badger is a simple matter of opening the box and off we go; a 100% successful recipie for enjoyment, which couldn't be said of the roleplaying, even when it was going well; which wasn't all the time, naturally enough. This was my motivation to turn the Sunday sessions into a regular boardgaming bash.

Even when Bill became the GM, the group dynamic changed because the midweek date ultimately reduced us to just 2 PCs: Tony and me. I think this just wasn't enough to give the games real momentum. Quite why the 3 of us failed to reach critical mass escapes me, although I do know of some contributory factors. I now believe that primary among them was Katana.

Readers who've known me since bygone days might be shocked by that admission, since they'll be all too aware that Katana is one of my all-time favourite PC's, so close to my heart that I coined the phrase 'primary projection' to express what he meant to me. That is to say: he was a creative expression of some of the deepest wellsprings of my subconscious strivings. Well known primary projections include Conan and Philip Marlowe.

At first sight you'd think that I'd've been delighted to return to a PC like that; in the hands of the GM who presided over his creation and the first phase of his adventures; and with the player - Tony, natch - who, as GM, gave Katana the second phase of his adventures, when we first roleplayed together back in the late 1990's. And I was. It's a nice experience to pick up an old PC and 'put him on' like you would a well worn coat. And that blog I wrote upon his return weighed heavily in the balance which eventually tipped in favour of my acceptance that rpg's are art.

Even so, with the benefit of hindsight after the roleplaying had unravelled, Bill mused that going back to Katana might've been a futile attempt to relive old glories. He was right, of course. Precisely because Katana is that primary projection, he is too deeply embedded in pasts that can't be revisited. Sure Bill and I could do Katana easily and well, but it was, as Bill said about Frank Miller's Sin City, a five-finger exercise.

Worse still, with the benefit of lengthy reflection on Bill's offhand remark, I have come to the conclusion that not only was Katana too easy to play for the pair of us; he was also an unfair obstacle we unwittingly threw in Tony's path. I mean to say, teaming up Tony's Witchblade with Katana effectively reduced her to a guest star in Katana's continuity, instead of being a co-star in her own. This is OK for one-offs or short mini-campaigns based on player transience, but not if you want a proper ongoing series. Each and every player should enjoy equal billing after all.

All of this is by way of looking back at some of the mistakes made in past roleplaying in the hopes of avoiding them in the future because, yes, we're talking about doing some roleplaying. In the end Donald's wish to roleplay again was just too keen to ignore.

I'd already suggested to Donald that he try the HERO system, and was pleased he was agreeable. On that basis, Donald is talking about a couple of ideas. It's likely that we'll begin with his first: an outlaw mini-campaign using Iron Crown Enterprise's highly esteemed 1987 Robin Hood: The Role Playing Campaign. I am already looking forward to this. I'm thinking of a character who is a master of the quarterstaff. Whatever complaints people might have about HERO, it cannot be gainsaid that its skills list and combat system renders weapon mastery in rich detail, and with mechanics that reward real tactics and actual practice as opposed to just dishing out stat upgrades.

For my part, I have two ideas for mini-campaigns of my own. One is HERO too: a return to my take on TSR's 1993 Bughunters. One of two books I've got from the late, unlamented Amazing Engine system, I liked Bughunters' concept: clone troopers in space fighting the bugs? What's not to like? I immediately realised though that I would run this game with HERO instead of the dumbass TSR AE.

I ran this with Tony and other friends back in the late 1990's. I've still got all the material I worked up for the game and the setting (a piece of background work was posted to the Trollslayer forums a few years ago). It just needs to be updated, and I'd be ready to run it again. This is something I'd like to do, because I liked the kinds of stories I was aiming at in the setting; and I had a few surprises in store for my shell-shocked players. Unfortunately we moved on to other games, and never went back to my Bughunter.

My other idea is to go back to WFRP, naturally enough. I'd like to run a more hi-octane game in a classic D&D style, albeit with a bit more than just dungeon bashing; a game in which I'd unleash without let or hindrance the full power of the game's hideous antagonists and its deadly combat system. Of course, I plan on making the potential rewards commensurate with the risk.

We still don't know quite how, when and with whom our return to roleplaying is going to pan out, but we'll be getting something going for sure. Expect to hear more. ;)

Will I? Won't I?

HERO Games have confirmed a release date for the first products of the new 6th edition of the classic rpg, formerly known as Champions. These products are:

• HERO System 6th Edition.
• HERO System 6th Edition: Combat and Adventuring.

They will be released at the Origins game fair in the US in late June.

I love the HERO system. It's still the strongest and most flexible rpg reality engine out there, and certainly my go-to game for flashing blades or gunplay. But I barely used my 5th edition HERO rules in 7 years (those few games with Katana back in 2007 are all, IIRC). Also, I thought that HERO5 was something of a bloated monstrosity compared to the sleek 4th edition, and I fear that the 6th edition will turn out grosser even than the infamous HERO 5th edition revised.

One thing I think I can say for sure: I won't be loading up on 6th edition product the same way I did with 5th edition, which occupies shelf width surpassed only by my WFRP2 collection. ;)

[From Purple Pawn]

Start the week @ RD/KA!: Meanwhile... elsewhere, at the table, and on the shelf

It's been an eventful few months in the gaming industry since last August. D&D4 had been announced just before that last post and has wreaked its attendant hullaballoo across the net in subsequent months. I haven't played D&D regularly since my teenage years, so I've not been following much of this at all. I daresay I'll end up buying the game just to see what it looks like. The most I can hope for from it is that I'll find it interesting enough to read it from cover-to-cover, unlike D&D3 and 3.5

Black Industries finally releases one of the longest awaited and most hotly anticipated roleplaying products ever, namely the 40K RPG Dark Heresy. It shifts shedloads just in time for GW to announce the closure of their Black Industries subsidiary, the better to concentrate on Black Library's core publishing. Lamentations and woe betide us all! Until Fantasy Flight Games rode to the rescue with a licencing deal for GW's (non-miniature) boardgame, cardgame and RPG licences.

Note that Black Industries made their announcement on Jan 28, FFG's was Feb 22. What was the purpose of this three and-a-half week delay I wonder? Was there really so much unfinished business? Or were there just salesmen who couldn't resist the opportunity to sow the seeds of some panic-buying, such as yours truly, who promptly went out and bought the Dark Heresy book which might otherwise've been left lying for some months to come, and who finished off his WFRP collection for good measure, "just to be on the safe side". Also, some readers might remember that BI had procured the licence for the DC RPG. Has this now reverted? Or can we expect something from FFG? Its announcement refers specifically to GW's IP, so I won't be holding my breath.

Elsewhere, Steve Long announced summer 2009 as the release of HERO 6th edition. In a surprising move, he also announced that he'd sold the Champions Universe property- the official setting of the Champions' RPG since the original edition- to Cyptic Studios, who are to use the setting (but not the rules) in their upcoming Champions Online MMORG. Long meanwhile plans to licence the IP back from Cryptic Studios for use in the HERO games line.

Finally, as roleplayers the world over know, Gary Gygax died on March 4th. As people've tried to put his contribution to roleplaying into perspective, we can be sure that roleplaying would've happened without him, but he certainly put his unique stamp on the early days of the hobby with things like his infamously quirky list of polearms in the AD&D DMG. And, whatever his precise contribution at any stage of the creation of D&D was, Gary Gygax became, to all intents and purposes, the founding father of roleplaying. I think the last thing any of those guys were thinking as they dreamed up new ways of playing games with their toy soldiers (when they really ought to've been "far too old for them", remember!) was that they would start anything which would transform the gaming industry, let alonge grant possible 'founding father' status to any of them. So we have to reckon that Gygax's coming to bear this honour was probably as unexpected by Gygax as by anyone else. When all is said and done, he seems to made a tolerably good job of bearing it. And D&D and roleplaying have outived him, which must have pleased him in the end, wouldn't you think?

Gaming stopped completely for a couple of months last year after I went offline, restarting in December in time for the Xmas day Combat Commander bash with Badger. Combat Commander has been at the table a lot since then, but regular sessions with Andy and Donald mean that a lot of other favourites, new and old, have been seeing action. Highlights have included my first victory as the Overlord in Descent, the thrilling tales of my derring duo of ace pilots in Crimson Skies, and my first game in more than 20 years of the old AH game of chariot racing Circus Maximus. Commands and Colours: Ancients and Settlers Cards have also made welcome appearances recently, which I would hope to see again in the future.

Of course, I've bought a few new games, mostly filling out games with expansions: Days of Wonder's Memoir'44 Air Pack and Battlelore Specialist Packs, CC:A expansions #2- Rome & the Barbarians and #3- The Roman Civil War,and the Descent expansions, including the new The Road to Legend campaign expansion. Fast Action Battle: the Bulge and Manoeuvre, both by GMT, are 2 completely new games I've bought recently. Alert readers will already've noticed that I've recently played Manoeuvre (see right...), but it's still too early to report other than to say that it looks like the game delivers what I'd hoped (which was 'what it said on the tin'- check out the link to its page at GMT's site to see what I saw...). I'm still digesting FAB: the Bulge, but I like the look of it quite a lot. Quite a lot indeed.

Meanwhile...

Not got time for a full entry, so just a quick update.

Got game!
Ros and I continued our Carcassonne contest last night. Ros won 2-1 on the night, sneaking her session-winning victory in the last few plays.

Carcassonne matches
3½-3½
Gah!

Blades: Too Many Katanas #1
Katana and Wychblayde got up to their antics again last Wednesday. The scenario involved confronting a bunch of Katana clones in the service of Katana's evil former masters. It can only get weirder.

More soon. ;)

The Children of Atlantis #2

First to Cairo...
Last week's first issue of this new Katana/Wychblayde teamup had ended with our 2 heroes having discovered who, what, where and why:

• Who- the Children of Atlantis.
• What- the fragments of the Great Seal of Lemuria.
• Where- the Museum of Antiquities in Cairo and the Guggenheim in New York.
• Why- raising sunken cities and awakening Elder Gods.

It didn't take us long to figure out that Cairo, being closer, should be our first destination. It took us a bit longer to realise that Katana's sword and Wychblayde's polearm would make regular air travel impossible. Some time was spent considering calling on the help of one of Katana's contacts, but I felt that it was inappropriate to make this call for the sake of a taxi-service. With a little prompting from Bill we soon hit on the plan of stowing away in the hold of a plane. This proved easy to do, and we were soon in the dry heat of Cairo.

A talkative 'tourist-friendly' cabbie and a minor diversion later, Katana and Wychblayde snuck into the Museum of Antiquities in the dead of night to locate the fragment of the Great Seal to save it from the Children of Atlantis. As Katana snuck through the darkened exhibition room, Wychblayde walked boldly forward under cover of her invisibility.

Her senses more alert than Katana's, Wychblayde saw what came next before it happened. A mummy's fist shot out from between the bars of a cage, sending Wychblayde flying and knocking her cold. As ever against such creatures of darkness, Katana attacked with Shadowsword-Alpha. To his horror the mummy seemed quite unaffected by his attack. Unfortunately, the same couldn't be said for Katana when the mummy threw a display case at him, which hit him easily. Another hit like that and he would be KO'ed too.

Cursing his rashness Katana began to fight more defensively. This worked until frustration at the mummy's seeming immunity to his sword-strikes brought about a change of tactics which lowered Katana's defences. The telling blow landed and he was KO'ed. And so it was that Wychblayde came to to see the mummy looming over the unconscious Katana. Her efforts to turn the fight round were to no avail and she was soon KO'ed again. Our pair of heroes came to dangling from the mummy's hands just long enough to hear the museum's alarms go off before the mummy knocked their heads together and they were unconscious yet again.

Katana and Wychblayde regained consciousness lying on the floor (and not in the clutches of the leering villain as I'd expected) and to the sound of fighting nearby. Katana sprinted to the scene to see the mummy fighting 4 of the Abhoroth daemons last seen in London, while a 5th beat a hasty retreat from the scene. The fight seemed like an even match, so we went to investigate the basement which lay beyond a shattered door nearby (clever move, eh?!). Sure enough, we found that the servants of the Children of Atlantis had got there before us, and the fragment of the Great Seal was nowhere to be seen.

Upstairs, and decided to leave the mummy and the Abhoroth to their fight to follow the trail of the daemon escaping with the booty, our departure was interrupted by the arrival of a flying figure wearing gold armour marked with an ankh which made him look for all the world like an Egyptian god. He promptly joined in the battle against the daemons.

Sensing what was afoot, Katana joined in. Shadowsword-Alpha didn't let me down this time, and 2 Abhoroth were quickly felled. Now outnumbered 2-1 the remaining 2 didn't last much longer. Katana was just readying himself to attack the mummy again when the new arrival called on me to hold.

Introductions were made. Ankh and the Mummy turned out to be members of the Brotherhood, Egypt's state-sponsored superteam. More than that, Katana and Ankh had mutual acquaintances. And so it was that, on learning of what had gone down in London, Ankh agreed to use his influence to get us onto a diplomatic flight to New York so that we could try to keep the remaining fragment of the Great Seal out of the hands of the Children of Atlantis.

And then to New York
Katana and Wychblayde presented themselves at the Guggenheim museum, where we were introduced to museum director Dr. Donovan. Donovan understood the seriousness of the situation and was glad to receive any assistance we could offer, and to offer any help he could reasonably agree to.

We then found ourselves on the horns of a dilemma. Just sitting tight to wait for the cultists to arrive was unappealing not least because we had failed to stop them at that stage twice already. But setting out to investigate the Children of Atlantis in New York might leave us blindsided by the cult. A solution to this on Wychblayde's part- eg. a teleport device- was beyond her powers. In the end Katana had a brainwave [an 8 on an 8- roll on a newly acquired basic Deduction roll, bought with one of last week's EP at Bill's prompting!]- the London and Cairo attacks had both taken place at night. So we now knew that we had time to spare.

With Wychblayde checking the Children of Atlantis website, we soon learned that one Brother Edmund Stark was due to speak at one of their offices that very night. Stark was the leader from London I suspected had been lying doggo after that first fight. Things started to fall into place quickly now. A call to Ankh back in Cairo confirmed that Stark had indeed just flown out from Cairo. He was clearly responsible for the ritual implanting the Abhoroth in their human hosts. So we had a chance to prevent the attack on the Guggenheim from leaving its lair in the first place.

The denouement was quick and simple after that. We were ferried to our location in the Egyptian embassy limousine which had been at our disposal since we'd landed in New York. Wychblayde went to the meeting of the Children of Atlantis in her civilian identity. Katana lurked on the roof of the building with her weapon.

The meeting over, several people were hanging around afterwards. Wychblayde snuck out of sight, instant-changed into her costume and switched on her invisibility. Her magical powers were unfortunately detected, alerting people in the room. Noticing something was up, Katana decided to make his entrance via a skylight.

The fight which followed was fairly short. It was lengthened only by Katana's need to wait until Wychblayde joined him so he could pass her blade to her. That done, he dealt with Stark with a couple of punches. The SMG-toting goons were easily mopped-up thereafter.

Polices sirens could be heard approaching at this point. We decided to leave, taking Stark with us as our prisoner. As the day wore on we found out that our triumph was complete: the Guggenheim wasn't attacked; and Stark- who we'd delieverd to the Egyptian embassy- turned out to be wanted for crimes in Egypt. We made sure he was returned there.

**********

We had a lot of fun with this session just like last week. I enjoyed getting into the swing of things with Katana again, and having little details of his new story develop. It was also fun working on bringing the Katana/Wychblayde relationship to life- I had Katana question Wychblayde about her powers so she could perhaps come up with a solution to our dilemma. And only just making that Deduction roll when Bill was despairing of feeding us the solution was a buzz too.

But, just like last week, the HEROmods Bill had adopted were the big star. We were all amazed at how quickly the combats run under these rules. More than that (and again, just like last week), it was clear that there is more to the initiative-based SPD system than just ease of use. The unpredictability of when you will actually get your phases is psychologically excellent. The simple fact that I have to wait for Katana to enjoy the benefits of his high SPD- instead of it coming up regular as clockwork as it does using the SPD table; this generates a frustration which makes him rash and impetuous in a way that it was so easy not to be using RAW. I really liked the way that this simple rules change brought new life to a familiar PC.

Oh, and we got 2 EP. So Katana has passed the 300pt mark at long last. And he now has the Deduction skill he's long needed to make him a proper detective. Whew!

I rolled dice! I kicked ass!

He's blue, he's bad, and he's back!
I noted in passing a month ago that Bill's Wednesday roleplaying session had devolved into boardgaming. We'd retrenched the group to just 3 of us: Bill, Tony and myself; given some thought to what it was we wanted from our roleplaying; and turned to White Wolf's high-powered anime-style fantasy rpg Exalted. We'd played an introductory session or two using some pregenerated characters.

To my surprise (I have deep prejudices against White Wolf and all their works), I found that I liked the setting and enjoyed the game. Even the system wasn't too bad with Bill's tweaks. We were getting into the swing of things well enough for Tony and I to create our own characters, about which we were happily scheming. Then, just when we were ready to go, Bill couldn't GM for a few weeks. And, just when he was about ready to GM again, Tony couldn't play for a couple more on top.

Faced with these hiccups, and with little time at his disposal to put the work into Exalted he thought it needed, Bill decided to fall back on an old favourite- HERO Games' classic superhero game Champions. I confess I was a bit surprised at this, what with the fate of this much-loved game in its bloated 5th edition being a favourite rant of ours in recent times. But I needed no 2nd bidding when Bill told me I could play Katana.

Readers who know me might be wondering why it's taken me so long to mention ol' blue pyjamas here at RD/KA!. And this all the more so when I mention that I got my first ever tryout of Green Ronin's excellent Mutants and Masterminds (about which I was enthusing as early as March last year); that this tryout came in a Katana session Bill and I played as long as a year ago. My ace new superhero game; playing Katana; and I didn't mention it? There will be astonishment somewhere when this is read I can assure you dear readers!

Katana- or, to give him his full monicker:

Katana: Sword Against Evil™
A renegade ninja who has set out to destroy the Evil that spawned him.

Here he is, in all his original Champions character-template and cheap-felt-pens glory.

Anyhoo, Katana is the first Champions character I ever created. I can remember where I was at the time- the flat, the room, the very furniture are all vivid in my mind's eye as if I could reach out and touch them. I can see myself hunched over that rulebook. I can remember the thrill of being able for the very first time to create exactly the character I wanted. And I can remember my delight as I created a character which I was later to discover is every GM's nightmare PC: the psycho loner (I seem to recall that he had 50pts of Berserk disadvantages in that first incarnation; and that's 50pts out of a total of 150pts of disadvantages!). I just couldn't help myself. Y'see this was pure self expression.

That was nearly 25 years ago. Although Katana isn't all that experienced (he should hit 50EP next week), he's still my favourite roleplaying character. So the chance to get him out to strut his stuff again for a while was more than merely irresistible- it was a much anticipated joy. And so it proved.

For his part, Tony dug out a PC I'd GM'ed for him when we first started roleplaying together- Witchblade, complete with a shiny new character picture. (From Just Walls via the random Gnomes' random Lair; thanks for that tip matey!)

Of dubious parentage (half-Fey, half-daemon), Witchblade is a technomage with a nice line in costumes and a host of handy gadgets at her disposal. She is also even madder than Katana, since she has chosen to join the War Against the Ultimate Evil (you'll've guessed by now I imagine that this isn't regular 4-colour superheroics) with combat attributes little better than those of a fit human.


What went down
The opening session was simple enough: Katana and Witchblade (who've met, but have never worked together as such- Tony and I were swapping GM'ing roles at the time) arrive separately at the British Museum in London, where they are expecting skullduggery involving a new display of Atlantean artefacts. They conceal themselves in the area of the display. Skullduggery duly beginning in the dead of night, Katana did what Katana does best: he leapt in and started some serious thwacking.

A lucky hit almost took him out right at the start, but he soon started to deliver his infamous 1-punch takeouts to the goons. Witchblade meanwhile was doing some zapping with her magic weapon- which included swiftly levelling the villains' leader (suspiciously swiftly now that I think back- was he lying doggo I now find myself wondering); while her magic forcefield was absorbing most of the punishment the goons' own magical weaponry was dishing out, but soon she too was nearly down and out.

We recovered. We prevailed. Katana easily grabbed the last goon, who had finally decided that it was time to flee. Questioning was to ensue. This was interrupted by the 6 malicious-looking daemons who climbed out through the cracked rib-cages of some of the downed goons. Relishing a fight in which he could use Shadowsword-Alpha™, Katana attacked promptly. Taking 3 blows to fell a single daemon, he realised that these were not the soft touches their human hosts had been.

Meanwhile, one of the daemons had grabbed an artefact from the museum display and was making its escape. Unfortunately Witchblade had by this time fallen under the claws of 2 daemons. Fearing that they would feed, Katana had to rescue her, thus letting the unknown artefact leave in a daemon's clutches.

Grabbing Witchblade and slinging her over his shoulder, Katana crashed out through a skylight onto the museum roof in 3 acrobatic leaps. Unfortunately the 4 remaining daemons were right behind him. This was very bad, because the leaps had cost him most of his puff (he spent most of his END pushing his leaps), and his head was swimming with the exertion of his continued flight (END exhausted, he was taking STUN damage each time he spent END- only 1d6 sure, but rolling lots of 5's was a real scunner at this point!).

Witchblade had come to in the meantime, and was firing off blasts from her eponymous weapon- to little effect unfortunately. Things were looking seriously dodgy: a couple more bad rolls and Katana would pass out, leaving us both at the mercy of the daemons. In the nick of time he pulled just far enough ahead of the evil feckers to pause for breath. This advantage was never lost, and the chase petered out in the streets below, the daemons slinking off into the darkness of the night-time alleys of London.

The rest of the session involved sneaking around, lurking, calling in a favour, and a bit of breaking and entering as Katana and Witchblade followed up leads in search of clues as to who was behind the raid on the Museum, and to their purposes. Katana was his usual brusque and obtuse self throughout, while Witchblade rapidly established good cat-fighting relations with Sarah West, the contact who owed Katana that favour. By the time the session drew to a close, we had learned that we were dealing with the Children of Atlantis, a two-bit cult who we presumed were patsies for larger powers dedicated to those tragically familiar goals: raising sunken cities and awakening Elder Gods.

Don't be misled by the brevity of my treatment of that sequence. It was a lot of fun. We got plenty of laughs, enjoyed some good roleplaying, and savoured the feeling of getting into our stride again. This was what we'd wanted. It's just that, well, the fight was thrilling (it's what Katana does best after all- hitting things). More than that though, Bill was using several variants, most important of which was one dispensing with the SPD table in favour of initiative rolls. We all liked how this worked; Bill especially because he didn't have to do any record-keeping.

More even than that: that chase sequence across the roof of the British Museum? It was as dramatic as it was precisely because of the uncertainty inherent in the initiative rolls. The fixed sequencing of the classic SPD table simply couldn't've generated the same feeling of imminent doom. I liked it a lot. (Although I have to note, Bill, that I'm still not 100% sold on the idea that using a d10 instead of a d12 is a matter of indifference.)

And that was that: the return of Katana: Sword Against Evil™, that renegade ninja who has set out to destroy the Evil that spawned him. There'll be more.

PS. We got 2 EP's. ;)

Start the week @ RD/KA!

Last Words... the Current Big Thing
Grognard reflexes honed over years of Squad Leader, Up Front and HERO rules-tinkering caused my bout of the Battlelore blues: I was pining for some more classically-detailed tacsims of the hex-and-counter school; challenges which M44 just can't deliver. M44 already looking a bit patchy, core BL beginning to feel a bit claustrophobic, and my just not getting enough games of C&C:A- I needed a new gaming fix.

I found exactly what I was looking for in GMT's Combat Commander: Europe. The title caught my eye while I was browsing through GMT's Project 500 lists last year: sample counters, map sections, and fate cards. Skimming the playtest rules (here are the current rules, and the FAQ, all laid on for your perusal) my immediate reaction was no more original than most- looks like a cross between Squad Leader and Up Front I thought. This prospect excited me, and I bought the game from the FLGS around new year.

Badger and I played a couple of games, and I liked it as least as much as I hoped I would. Then Martin had a go on his recent visit. His first impressions were mixed- not bad, but a bit meh. A few games later he was singing CC:E's praises as the best game I've shown him in years. Tony is similarly enthusiastic, and we've been playing several games a week lately. Badger and Donald are keen on it too.

Designer Chad Jensen has a definite hit on his hands. My most played game of 2007 so far. ;)

Meanwhile...

Well, Tony was round again this afternoon. He's never properly seen HERO5 in action yet- our last roleplaying run having run out of steam under the rule of 4th ed.; so we tried out a quick bout of fisticuffs to familiarise ourselves with the new stuff that we both hope to be GM'ing and/or PC'ing just asap. We had a good laugh; admired some of the nice touches in the revisions to the combat system; and some cleverly chosen maveouvres and a couple of well-timed haymakers (not to mention a hefty dose of Sheer Dumb Luck on Tony's part: to which he has already confessed, so this is less than Sad Loser's Whinging!) left my basic template mook dying- from injuries to the face and head. OUCH!

After that we continued developing the key NPC's behind the new superhero campaign we're working away on. As a result of today's efforts we now know the following to our satisfaction: who they are; where they came from; how they first met; what went down through that first encounter; how they fell in together thereafter; and, what roles each fulfils in their double-act. We are both well-pleased with how this longstanding project is now beginning to develop ever more rapidly with each session we put in to shaping it up.

Whiling away some time before tea thereafter, I took a look through a book I've had on my shelves for years now, but which has only finally revealed it full value to me since Donald started his FB game. I picked up this book some 25 or more years ago for the then already low price of £1 in a 2nd hand bookshop in Perth. It is:

The Student's Manual of Modern History

Containing the
Rise and progress of the principal European nations, their political history, and the changes in their social conditions

With a history of
The colonies founded by Europeans

By
W.C. Taylor, LL.S., M.R.A.S.
of Trinity College Dublin

The sixth edition, with additions

London:
John W. Parker and Son, West Strand
MDCCCLVI
[1856]

Really rather the worse for wear, it wasn't the price which made this book an instant purchase for me. No, it was this section from the Preface:

"In this the sixth edition the Supplmentary Chapter has been considerably enlarged, so as to bring down the History to the Treaty of Paris signed at Paris, March 30, 1856..."

What the...?! Imagine that I thought: a 'stop press' to update a book for the end of the Crimean War. I would like to think that was the moment when I realised what history was really all about.

Whatever the truth of that matter, this volume has had a cherished place on my bookshelves down the years since the day it came into my possession. I can say with more certainty that this book did give me a taste for works contemporaneous with my favourite period of history- namely the 1st half of the 20th century (I was a teenage tankie, y'see); and that it is the nearest thing I have to a genuine antiquarian work in my 'library' (thank goodness for those classic orange/blue and white Penguin and Pelican originals!).

And the book itself? Well, apart from its antiquated style, which is just perfect for atmosphere, here is a sample of its contents:
I. Consequences of the Fall of the Western Empire;
VI. The Reformation, and the Commencement of the States System in Europe;
VIII. Growth of the Mercantile and Colonial System;
XIV. History of the Jews.
There is also a 16-page Analytical and Chronological Index (that's A5 approx. in max. 8-point type- THIS OR SMALLER IN OTHER WORDS) that runs from AD 50 onwards. In short, Taylor's old Student's Manual looks like it will prove invaluable to my WFRP and to Donald's FB both. I certainly know that I saw Donald with his nose deep in its yellowing pages Sunday last during our break from the adventures of Felix and the good Baron. ;)

A rash of enthusiasm...

... for Up Front

Readers who know me might be surprised that I haven't already filled page after page about this great game (or about, y'know... No, no, he's another story).

Up Front (UF), designed by Courtney Allen and published by Avalon Hill in its pre-Hasbro days back in 1983 is, in my opinion, the greatest wargame since chess. Such (possible?) hyperbole aside, it is certainly my desert-island game of choice. With the possible exception of backgammon it is the single game I have played more than any other, ever.

So having announced my fondess for UF in such grandiloquent terms, how can I explain what it is about this game that makes it the WW2 tacsim which comes closest to giving me the same buzz that I get from a good roleplaying session with a favourite PC in the hands of a class GM?

I think I can make a stab at a start by summing up its appeal as:

1. Sheer playability
2. Superb authenticity
3. Groundbreaking design conception

Sheer playability
Well I've already said that this is the most played game ever in my adventure games collection; which amounts to some thousand and more games, most of them over a period of 5/6 years' intensive play right after I'd got it.

This is the game that, back in the days when none of us had day-jobs to worry about, we would literally play for 24 hours or more at a stretch. And that's a gang of us playing winner-stays-on round robin with a single set. Just how many boardgames can you think of that are so compelling that more than half of a group of hardcore gamers there assembled would be willing to sit out all that time just for their game? (Not unlike playing pool in a pub.)

UF is also the only boardgame that's ever reduced me to a heap of hysterical laughter rolling on the floor due to the sheer madness of the play.

More objectively, UF is a game that a smart player can learn in less than half an hour with the help of a good teacher; which you can play in 45-90 minutes once you've mastered the rules- allowing several games in a reasonable evening's gaming. UF was also the first game that gave us what we came to call the 'arcade game' effect - that irresistable desire to have another go because you just know you can do it next time.

You don't have to be a grognard - let alone a WW2 buff - to enjoy UF; you just have to enjoy a supreme tactical challenge and the experience of increasing mastery of a vivid recreation of the problems of squad-level combat in WW2.

Superb authenticity
Sheer damn good fun aside, the authenticity of UF as a simulation of its chosen subject is the single issue that most strongly divides its fans from its detractors (and the latter most certainly outnumber the former I'd have to admit I guess). It's the cardplay that is the kicker here, with the opinions of the nay-sayers most often summed-up under terms like 'floating terrain'.

This arises because everything that happens in a game of UF is driven by an action deck. That's not just doing the obvious things like issing orders, eg. movement, firing and rallying; nor even the use of card-draw action resolution; but also determining the very shape of the battlefield itself, eg. that building out there you're looking for?- well you don't know where it is until you draw a building card from the action deck; and you can't get there without a movement card.

The M:tG generation might find this unexceptional, but I can assure you that those aging fans of hexmaps, CRT's, ZoC's of the 70's school of SPI, GDW, and so on, well a lot of them just didn't get it, so that UF has basically taken on geek cult status amongst grognards. All the same it remains my contention that precisely what UF lacks - ie. the omniscient overview and the omnipotentence of the turn-by-turn counter pushing; well, this is what gives the game its unique feel for that old chestnut of wargames design - the fog of war.

In UF, you know your enemy - your opponent's squad; and you know your mission - the victory conditions; otherwise, well you can have a pretty good idea of what's out there, but you're not sure where it is, how long it'll take you to get there, nor even how well-prepared the enemy will be in the face of your plan. And even if you do figure that out, you can't be sure how well your men will perform, if their morale will hold, or if there'll be enough of them left once you've closed with the enemy for you to be able to achieve your objective.

On top of this psychology provided by the action deck, UF also enjoys some neat games mechanics demonstrating a painstaking study of its subject. The best features of the mechanics aside from the cardplay are the morale and shooting rules.

Morale is handled by the by now familiar 2-state: good order and pinned. Pinned men can't move or fire, which hampers and slows down the rest of their group (fireteam).

Firepower works as volume fire against morale instead of individual direct fire conducted man-to-man, which was the typical mechanic back in UF's day. Basic infantry weapons are richly rendered, with simple rules reflecting the differences between rifles, SMG, and MG's, and between, say, the bolt-action, semi-automatic and fully automatic versions of the former. Actual fire attacks are executed via action card draws, with some simple and neat mechanics which work out to give an excellent feel for the effects of cover, and for the difference between sporadic fire that keeps your men's heads down, and sustained bursts that gun them down in droves.

Around this core of fire and movement are many other neat rules: infiltration and close combat; weapons malfunctions and repairs; special weapons, eg. the dreaded flamethrower; pillboxes, minefields, ordnance, and tanks.

The tank rules are really nice, smoothly presenting them in a form appropriate to their power at this level of combat, which includes their vulnerablities too naturally enough. Even something as complex as the difference between solid and shaped-charge AT munitions is presented with rules so subtle that you might not even notice what's going on.

All in all then, I would be very surprised if someone could present a sustainable case that UF is a poor simulation of its chosen subject, even if the game was to remain not to their taste.

Groundbreaking design conception
The use of cardplay to control and to resolve actions wasn't pioneered by UF. Avalon Hill's Gunslinger is but one example of a game that uses cards for both these purposes. What marks UF out from the other examples with which I am familiar is the integration of these functions into a single deck (Gunslinger gives each player their own - fixed - set of action cards, and uses a separate resolution deck). More than that too is the integration of the battlefield itself into the very same deck (Gunslinger uses the familar board and counters).

It is this integration of space and time on the battlefield into a seamless whole via the medium of the action deck that was unique to UF. The overall effect was to give the game a definite viewpoint analagous to that of a PC in an rpg. I mean, tabletop military simulation games had hitherto presented a viewpoint that was, by and large, totally unreal: that of the top-down map view.

This is something that was just about credible in the days of Napoleon and hilltop generalship on the field of battle. Even then the lie of the land would typically give the lie to this perspective. In the 20th century this viewpoint basically could and did not exist. What UF confronted then was a deeply rooted trend in simulationist gaming where the players' viewpoints in practice represented some nebulous notion of the staff and the command structure, not the generals themselves as so fondly imagined by grognards everywhere.

In UF, the players represent the platoon commanders (they have to: if they were actually on the table, then their death would be an immediate defeat, surely?), located somewhere just off the table. The effect of the cards is to distill into an easy playable form the way in which they would receive information and give orders about a situation they basically cannot see, and over which they have limited control.

It has to be said that Allen himself wasn't completely responsible for the design innovations that he was using here. The simple fact that UF was billed as the "Squad Leader card game" tells us that he owed a debt to John Hill's trailblazing work on the idea of modelling the effects of a given thing (or set of things if those things all have the same overall effect) instead of modelling each particular way in which that effect is delivered. I happen to believe that Hill's work also influenced George MacDonald and Steve Peterson - whose similarly groundbreaking rpg Champions used the same approach to the modelling of comicbook superpowers.

I also happen to believe that this posited parallel influence is more than merely fortuitous. What I mean here is that what underpins the levels of abstraction that make the UF action deck such a joyous gaming engine is exactly the principle Allen developed from Hill's work, ie. model effect and not mechanism.

In this case though Allen went further than just reducing the effects of a variety of different weapons to a single unified mechanic, as had Hill. In UF, Allen went on to model the 'effect' of the squad level action on the platoon leader existing in a location separate from the action the game actually plays out, and vice versa. In other words the uncertainties of the action deck are a mechanism to model the effects of the distance between leader and led, with the resultant communications lag and general lack of specific information.

What made this so exciting at the time was the sense that this was a design concern - that of adequately modelling a single and definite viewpoint - which we were all convinced was a direct product of the advent, in the preceding decade, of the rpg.

And that's it:- Up Front: great game; fine simulation; and tacsim schwerpunkt of the post-D&D history of adventure gaming.

"Take fire 10!"

Related@RD/KA!
- A rash of enthusiasm for Memoir'44, Part 1: Another hymn of praise to cardplay

On reflection...

Here's another one I prepared earlier since today is the WFRP game (and some Flashing Blades too perhaps; we'll see eh?).

A train-journey back west yesterday gave me time to read HERO:GC more thoroughly, so I just thought I'd put up some remarks beyond first impressions.

Where to start, where to start? Seriously: I have comments to make about several aspects of this book, and faced with the choice between knitting the different ideas together into a coherent exposition, or ravelling them up into an even greater fankle, I find myself wondering which thread to lay down first.

At the beginning then. For all my gripes (does HERO have more gripes/GM than other rpg's I wonder?), HERO remains one of my favourite rpgs, and without doubt still the best rpg system out there. When all is said and done, this game has never looked better than it does in this edition. I have more HERO5 product on my gaming shelves than any other rpg; more, in fact, than any game ever except 40K (that's 15 books at 27cm wide btw).

Galactic Champions is definitely one of the more disappointing HERO5 supplements I have bought. What are my reasons for this? I think in essence they are twofold:
1. As much as I like superheroing in HERO, I'm not at all sure that I think that HERO is the best system for playing cosmic level games.
2. I'm not a great fan of HERO background material- the Champions 3000 universe in this case.
I'll take each in turn.

Cosmic-powered HEROes?
The underlying coherence of the HERO system means that one thing that cannot be said is that cosmic power levels break the system per se. No, my criticism is not directed there. Ironically enough it is directed at one of my favourite features of the 1d6/5pts core of the mechanics- big handfuls of dice. I have long been a fan of the idea that big dice pools are a good way of giving players a feel for high powered characters.

I mean, faced with a choice, and all things being equal, I'd always rather roll to hit then roll 14d6 for a martial strike, than roll 1d20 to resolve everything in one handy dice roll. I like that particular crunch. The problem with cosmic powered HEROes is, well consider Bulletproof, from the Champions 3000 team (HERO:GC, pp.47-50). With 70rPD/ED, this guy can soak 20 average Nd6 (23 SE Nd6). So we're talking about 30d6 before your attacks can start troubling this guy.

This makes perfect sense at the power level in question, but well: I know for sure that I'd always rather roll a 30d6 megapool for CC in 40K than for effect in HERO, especially GM'ing. This is a simple matter of how the different piles of dice generate results. This dicepool overload leads to, IMO, one of the poorer design decisions in the crunchy part of HERO:GC- Firedancer (op. cit, pp.52-54), an energy projector with 6 (count them- 6!) RKA (2-6d6), a 2d6KA damage shield, no normal attacks at all and... a 15pt (common, strong) CVK. WTF?!

OK, OK. It has to be said that this howler aside, Firedancer is a fine example of rpg superhero design that showcases nicely the strengths of HERO, those same old virtues of the days of yore. I could go on about this CVK thing with all the invective at my disposal, but it all boils down to this: as GM, I doubt I would consider ever letting a PC with nothing but KA take any CVK at all. It's just plain dumb, because the 'exceptional circumstances' which such a player would've had to plead to try to get this by me would inevitably have a habit of turning up all the damn time, or I wouldn't be doing my job properly as GM.

Looking at Firedancer as an NPC then, I have to conclude that all her KA are there to make life easier for the GM, by shrinking her dice pool, and also perhaps to make her, well, a bit more, erm... frightening? I mean, at this level, PC's expect to soak 20-30 normal BOD on a bad day, so that KA keep them honest, so to speak.

What I am describing here is a situation in which the system's logic is fine, but the dice required to exercise it in practice just get silly, so silly that, well, Firedancer has a CVK... No, to be more precise: a 4-colour cosmic energy projector with CVK (a perfectly reasonable character conception) is designed with a suite of RKA because this is:
1. easier for the GM to manage in play
2. a more genuine challenge to the PC's according to the system's logic in any case.
Cosmically powered superheroics, in other words, would seem to pose serious challenges to HERO's longstanding and justly maintained claim to be the genre simulation non pareil on its home turf- the comicbook superhero genre.

The Champions Universe
This is a place I've never 'been'. I joined an existing, and ongoing superhero universe when I first took to Champions, and as GM have always most liked the game because it gave me the system with which I could most thoroughly design my own universes. So what I know of the Champions universe I am essentially learning from HERO5.

And it seems a perfectly good universe to me. It has all the classic elements I've enjoyed adventuring in in other GM's universes, or designing into my own. It shows all the signs of being lovingly developed through years of actual play, as opposed, that is, to being sucked out of someone's thumb for the sake of another new setting.

Now at this point I could get all litcrit on Darren Watt's ass, but that would be to mis-state my point entirely. Meantime, any readers who are able could do worse than test what I'm on about by comparing the colour text in WFRP2:OWB and HERO5:HSB. The WFRP stuff strikes me as being better written frankly. More importantly though, its structure and layout make it, well, much more vivid and accessible, therefore a better bestiary, score it how you will.

Forget systems snobbery here: you can strip out all the mechanics crunch from the 2 bestiaries not to mention any lingering nonsense about generic versus particular in terms of setting, all of that conceptual nonsense. Grammer, clarity of exposition, lah-de-bloody dah, all of that can be ignored, all the commonplaces of effective technical exposition, etc, etc. At the end of the day, the Old World Bestiary snaps, crackles, pops, rocks and freakin' rolls; the HERO System Bestiary?- HERO's best yet for sure, but colour... honestly?- a good chunterin' fizz.

With which I certainly intend monstrously to smack my PC's just asap mark you! ;)

A sensible decision

I've taken to hanging out on the BI forums since I started GM'ing WFRP, and by and large I've found it to be an enjoyable and helpful place. It's been hell getting into them for a couple of weeks though, with server timeouts stopping access perhaps as much as 50% of time. Not good.

So, it is with some satisfaction that I tried to visit the forums yesterday only to find the following message:

Due to the problems our forum has been experiencing of late, caused by sheer level of traffic, we are temporarily disabling it.

We will be investigating either fixing the system or installing a newer more reliable system.

Please accept our apologies for the break in service and we thankyou for your patience.

The Black Industries Team

Good choice lads. Far better IMO to irk us for a wee while as we wait for a more servicable forum, than irritate us constantly with a forum we can't get to regularly. And given the great success of WFRP2, this is a problem we would all have 'hoped' would get worse. Just in case anyone associated with the decision-making process at play here might be reading this (if only, eh?!), I would recommend 2 formats both of which I have found to be ideal for games-related efora:

1. Invision Power Board
- as used by the Bolter and Chainsword.

2. vBulletin
- as used by HERO.

If someone at BI to whom this information might be useful is reading this, then you probably don't need me to tell you this anyway! Just thought I'd put it up anyhoo, because those are my favourite bulletin board formats at the moment in any case.