Summer Conclave 2012 - 15th September - Kaede Mack Conspiracy

[RobSkib]

*second edit*

The Kaede Mack Conspiracy

Saturday 15th September, Warhammer World, Nottingham

Kaede Mack, the most infamous criminal mastermind the universe has never heard of. On some planets he is the administrator of an unstoppable narcotics ring. Throughout the Dust sector he is the notorious head of an authority-crippling weapons smuggling syndicate and has been linked with illegal cloning and organ harvesting. Across the Onus region, the name of Kaede Mack is not spoken in hushed tones, but celebrated and paraded every Harvestquart as the charismatic revolutionary that allowed the planets to throw off the Monarchical shackles keeping them in the dark ages and join the future of high technology. Where organised crime or armed conflict exists in the universe, the Kaede Mack Conglomerate will have their hand in its success or failure.

Yet despite all this, nobody has ever captured the real Kaede Mack, only lowly knock-offs claiming to be him and going out in a blaze of cheap glory. Whenever investigations get close to unravelling the Conglomerate, law enforcement are handed a Mack on a silver platter, satisfying their need for justice and temporarily quietening criminal activity in the area. These handful of Macks ardently claim to be the real Kaede Mack, and have gone to execution halls and court rooms screaming it until their last breath.

It has troubled high authorities for decades how the kingpin of the Mack Conglomerate can be so elusive, even with an entire division of the Inquisition assigned to the investigation. Wicked whispers circulate that Kaede Mack is an alien conspiracy, or a device of Chaos or that the name is merely a placeholder for a larger, more powerful shadow organisation. Whatever the case, the Conglomerate is adept at feeding authorities precisely what they expect to find when they get too close to the truth - until now.

The inquisition's double agents, brainwashed Mechanicus Cistron spies and grizzled trackers have sent reports that have set lawmen and lawless men on edge. Never before have two Mack operatives been spotted in the same place, but on the unassuming planet of Daphnia in the Dust sector, dozens have been confirmed to be operating openly.

Like a cloud of proto-locusts they descend to the planet – enemies and allies of the Kaede Mack Conglomerate, all chasing their own agendas. Lawmen can taste victory; Mack has nowhere to run any longer, they will finally capture and bring him in for questioning. Criminals are attracted to the Conglomerate with promises of riches and acknowledgement of unparalleled proportions if they can aid or usurp the infamous Kaede Mack. There are even those who have infiltrated Mack's operation and have been using him for decades as the most far-reaching and advanced spy network ever to have existed, and cannot let that be compromised.

Whatever their alignments, pro-Mack or anti-Mack, they all have one undeniable shared goal; to reveal the truth behind the Kaede Mack Conglomerate.

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The Kaede Mack Conspiracy is a one-day Inquisitor Event being run at Warhammer World in Nottingham on Saturday 15th of September.

New players, old players, fresh Inquisitorial acolytes and hoary old Inquisitor Lords alike are all welcome at the event. No models are required to play on the day, there will be enough spare models to be able to take part, but you will find it much more rewarding to have your own protagonist represented on the tabletop.

The Mack Conglomerate will be the primary antagonist of the Event, although they will not be the main adversaries. Inquisitorial warbands, Chaos renegades, Rogue Traders and excommunicated guardsmen will all by vying over the spoils of war left behind by the Conglomerate, as well as trying to  infiltrate it's ranks, uncover its secrets, claim the network for themselves or simply try and destroy the whole criminal organisation.

Consequently, a handful of Kaede Mack warbands may be present to act as the catalyst if everybody turning up on the day decides they want to outright destroy the organisation. You are therefore encouraged to bring a Warband you believe would have the most interesting relationship with the organisation, that could feasibly operate in the shadowy areas in between right and wrong.

At the end of the day however, the objective is for everybody to have had a rip-roaring good time, regardless of the characters they do/don't bring - nobody will be turned away or denied a game for any reason, and there's always room for one more!


If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to ask

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+++GAVs EDIT+++
copied /edited from later in the thread so it's easy to see

Confirmed Attendance
-RobSkib
-MarcoSkoll
-Joel McKickass
-Van Helser
-Greenstuff_Gav
+1
-Bloodpact
-Brother_Brimstone

Maybe attending
-Almundis
-Kaled
-Holiad
-Myriad
-Cortez

*/edit* - Original post follows, most of this is now obsolete, but is recorded for posterity -

Howdy folks!

Those that have been following will have noticed the Summer Conclave this year has been handed over and the show will go on! It's going to be based around the now infamous Mack Conglomerate, investigating it's heirarchy, infiltrating it's upper echelons and figuring out how to disassemble or reinforce it. I won't go into all the details here, I'll start a new thread for that in a week or so, this is just for a show of hands.

I know what I believe worked and what didn't work at the various Conclaves I've attended, but I'm curious to see if people agree with me. I'm keeping this thread spoiler free as I don't want anyone to know what I have planned, obviously, but this is to get a rough idea of what people like and what I should avoid when writing scenarios.

Disclaimer: Those that have already sent me offers of help, thanks! I'll be contacting you individually

> Contact cards (or equivalent): I think they work. They assign a numerical victory to something that otherwise is difficult to quantify. Would people object if I did away with them completely, and had a completely different scoring style?

> Location: I'm playing with the idea of focussing the whole day around a single city on a single planet. Going from memory at which boards and scenery will likely be available, this will be easily achievable. Does this limit scope too much, or would people prefer free reign over their scenarios? That leads me quite nicely onto...

> Scenarios: I'm going to write scenarios for people to play out, and I'm going to bring extra, just in case. We always end up with the same few people GMing for whatever reason, so it's unfair to expect people to bring in multiple scenarios. That said, people who do want to are welcome to, answers on a postcard to the usual address.

> Finale: The big one. It's been different every time, and will probably be different this time. I liked Marco's multi table action and could quite easily do a refined/copied version of that, would people object? Getting to the final table needs to feel like a reward, but the side tables need to feel like they are achieving something as well. Definitely a tricky one.

> Prizes? Everyone likes a good old-fashioned hobby competition - show us your best ultra-criminal warbands! Entry fee to go towards the prize pot, ask for donations, official sponsorship or a mix of the three?

Let me know your thoughts and feelings! I've tried to keep it vague so I can hit y'all with the info dump at a later date, for now we're just blue sky thinking.

[MarcoSkoll]

Contact cards: It works well, but without experimentation, we won't know if anything else works better. If you have another suggestion, throw it out there.

Location: Hmm. Centred around a single city perhaps, but not centred in a single city, so as to give people some freedom as to writing scenarios. (For one thing, if I've actually got the Jubilee in one piece, I am so going to have to make use of it.)

Finale: I don't pretend I'd got the multi-table format completely slick at the Autumn Conclave (overcharged orbital las-lances did somewhat affect the originally intended balance between the tables), but I do think there's mileage in it. Everyone gets to play, but without the pacing issues of a dozen players with a single character each.

Prizes: Maybe, yeah. I'm not opposed to entry fees or making donations (they're not exactly significant alongside travel), but if it's going to put others off, then I'd rather a bigger event than one with prizes.
Sponsors probably isn't an option though if we're planning to do it at WHW. GW aren't likely to sponsor us, and they won't be happy with us playing up other manufacturers.

Not sure I'll be bringing an ultra-criminal warband myself though. Too many things already not getting attention to try and fit more in.
It would be a great excuse to go back, fix up, repaint and finish Marco's warband though (and finish my own Kaede Mack as either an NPC or a temporary "ally"), as he's got a history with Kaede Mack.

[Kaled]

Contact cards: I like them but would certainly have no objection to you trying something different. But while we're on the subject of the cards, one idea I've considered for future events is players being able to trade in a card for an advantage in a scenario rather than just being able to bring one more character. So players may have to choose between numerical superiority or some other advantage. Another thing I thought of is players competing for 'credits' and then being able to trade them in for access to something in the campaign. Maybe players would need 100 credits to play on the spaceport table, and winning there would bring them some big advantage that they couldn't get from playing on other tables. Or having a leader board so everyone can see who is 'winning' and can try to stop them could be interesting. (I'm not suggesting you use any of these ideas - I'm just throwing them out there and might use some of them myself one day.)

Location: Up to you. One city could be restrictive, but if you make sure the city has plenty of varied environments then it shouldn't be a problem. And if people run their scenarios past you before the day you should be able to make sure they all fit together somehow.

Finale: I think there are plenty of options you could use. Marco's worked well, and you could definitely do worse than to follow his lead. I'd like to try a multi table game where events on the main table effect the others rather than the other way around, or I have a vague idea for a finale where characters will need to move between tables over the course of the game.

Prizes: I think a free to enter event is probably the way to go, but there's nothing wrong with prizes if we can get them. I think we should run a Build a Kaede Mack Competiton on the run up to the Conclave - maybe award a prize for that...

[Heroka Vendile]

> Contact cards (or equivalent): They do work pretty well, but I can think of a couple ways of making them more than just a purely numerical thing. Perhaps adding "suits" to them such as Administratum, AdMech, Ordo Xenos, etc - then when someone gets 5 from a suit they get to cash them in for a reward in the next game? Obviously this would require a greater number of cards to be in circulation to give a better chance of achieving this, although just using duplicate cards wouldn't be an issue I reckon. It would of course require a slightly different method of giving out the cards to replace the "place you bets" method we've used before.

> Location: keeping the location down to a planet/city makes sense really, means the framing device for the campaign doesn't have to be a sprawling sector-wide thing. Plus just because it's within a city or it's surroundings, that doesn't really limit the types of events or terrain that players can come across

> Scenarios: I reckon this one really depends on how story focused or how open-ended you want the day to be. The more story focus you want, the better off you are pre-writing all the scenarios yourself to fit your grand plan.

> Finale: The big one. It's been different every time, and will probably be different this time. I liked Marco's multi table action and could quite easily do a refined/copied version of that, would people object? Getting to the final table needs to feel like a reward, but the side tables need to feel like they are achieving something as well. Definitely a tricky one.

> Prizes? I would perhaps shy away from entry charges, I think we're best keeping that just for the IGT. Same with prizes to an extent.

EDIT: just realised I'd left the "Finale" section with RobSkib's original text instead of my thoughts.
> Finale: The last non-IGT thing I made it to was the Carthax Succession, so I've no real knowledge of how Marco ran the last one. It's a tricky thing to do I'm sure, half of me thinks everyone with a single PC on the one table is better as it creates mass player interaction at the crucial moment and half of me thinks splitting across 2 or 3 separate interacting games is better to give people more focus and variety.

[RobSkib]

Excellent feedback, thanks guys!

Contact cards: Looks like everyone wants some numerical system that can show you at a glance who is doing better than others, but clearly needs some refinement. I've been toying with the idea of splitting the contact cards into two -  using 'water tokens' and regular contact cards. Everything else on the planet is freely available, supplies, ammo etc, but water is a precious commodity - you will be given a finite number of these, one token is expended to use one character, and you will be given enough to field two characters each game (or 3 in one, a single character in another, etc). Unlike contact cards however, you can 'loot' tokens from fallen enemies and there might be a 'great train robbery' mission where you pull off some thrilling heroics to plunder some water supplies. I've not decided how to make the contact cards interesting yet, but what do people think about that so far?

Location: Exactly the kind of feedback I'd hoped for. Yup, it will be set around a city, more than in it, and like Heroka said, there shouldn't be anything bar a few extremes that the setting won't be able to handle.

Scenarios: There has to be a grand plan amongst the chaos, even if it doesn't look like there is I'll figure something out in that regard, but I'm not putting too much concern into dozens of player-written scenarios derailing the plot. From experience, maybe two or three people bring in their own scenarios and actually use them - most people will take the pre-written scenarios because they stick to the plot more, or the player hadn't anticipated GMing. I'll bring enough scenarios just in case nobody wants to do their own, but like I said, they're more than welcome to.

Finale: I'll have to have a headscratch about this one. Seems everybody wants 'the same but different', so I'll put some thought into how I can make mine interesting.

Thanks for your thoughts, keep 'em coming!

[MarcoSkoll]

Given the possible difficulty of getting places at WHW without enough prior warning and the difficulty with organising players, should we perhaps start looking at dates, at least provisionally?

I'm assuming we're looking for somewhere June through August, but I'll point out straight off the bat that the first half of June is a bad choice. June 9th is Molotov's INQvitational and at least three of our 54mm regulars are signed up to that, with the adjacent weekends probably out too due to the various SWMBOs involved.

[Kaled]

I agree, getting a date sorted should be the first priority - we may not have a lot of choices anyway depending on what else is on at WHW over the summer.

[JoelMcKickass]

I'd be up for this depending on dates, though me being up for something and me being able to actually do it tend to be completely different things these days. I can't make the big one because of prior commitments (another reason to be annoyed with my girlfriends mum ).

[Bloodpact]

Yeah, chuck me in. Im local, so any date is good for me.

[RobSkib]

Well hot damn, it's been a while. Firstly, apologies for taking so damn long for getting round to this - I am still trying to get this to go ahead and I have big plans. That said, if it's bad timing, too late or someone else has already put events in motion to take the Autumn Clave, just let me know and I'll hand the reins over. I don't want to double book.

I have my excuses, some more legit than others. The biggest being working 15 hour days to try and meet all my university deadlines, which should be finally over around late april/early may. In the meantime, I can organise dates and bounce ideas around but nothing much more.

So in conclusion, consider this resurrection resurrected!

*EDIT* Brain fart. Forgot to include the dates. I've contacted WHW and they said "...the only date without an event of some type and a member of the events team in" is the weekend of the 15th-16th of September. Is that a good time for people?

[Kaled]

I forget what their rules are, but every other weekend used to be a 'free-play' one where tables can only be booked a short time in advance - that's not going through the events team, just booking with WHW. I can't remember how long in advance we can book if we go down that route, but we've certainly done things that way in the past. Might be worth ringing WHW (rather than the events team) and finding out...

[Bloodpact]

15th and 16th is the Gulf Waagh Tempus Fugitives event at Maelstrom Games, but i havent bought my ticket for that yet, so you still have time to show me why this will be better

[MarcoSkoll]

Unless the circumstances of my life change, 15/16th Sept works out fine for me. I'm rarely booked up on weekends - it's only really Inquisitor events and once a year going to play steam trains (last weekend in September).

[Kaled]

That September date is just one week before my wedding - however I'll try to attend (assuming there's no last minute rush to sort wedding stuff).

Given that we're struggling to find dates this year, it might be worth people booking dates for 2013 - the IGT is in March, so maybe book dates for June, September & December?

[MarcoSkoll]

I'm not sure we've got events to fill those slots yet. I think the only suggestion for a 2013 event thus far is the dual scale event, and I need to drum up more support and sort some of the logistics for that before committing to it. Probably find at least one co-GM too.

Are we suggesting booking slots pre-emptively that we just hand over to anyone who wants to run an event?