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I believe introductions are in order?

Started by Nvision, March 01, 2017, 09:19:52 PM

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Nvision

Hello, all!  I've been lurking about for a while, gaining inspiration and insight from your posts and have now decided to dive in fully. 

I recently gave up on 40K (several reasons, not truly relevant), but then a friend suggested I check out Inquisitor.  This is actually the game I've been wanting to play for ages.  It has all of the fluff and hobbying aspects I love about the Grimdark, with none of the negatives that I had previously bemoaned.  Unfortunately, I had sold off the bulk of my models already, including my wonderful bits, so I'm in the process of rebuilding.

I have several people interested in playing, so I've worked up a cooperative campaign to allow each player to control a single character and ease them into the system.  Slowly gathering more resources, I've also started to put together the antagonist's retinue and other threats they'll be up against.  I was even lucky enough to find a hardcopy of the rules :)  Looking forward to hopefully giving something back to the community here.

mcjomar

Welcome to the Conclave!

We'll be glad to hear of any exploits or see any cool pictures you may have. Fresh faces and new ideas always welcome (and debated/discussed). ;D
"Heretics are like cockroaches - annoying to find, and even more annoying to kill." - unattrib.

MarcoSkoll

#2
Quote from: Nvision on March 01, 2017, 09:19:52 PMThis is actually the game I've been wanting to play for ages.  It has all of the fluff and hobbying aspects I love about the Grimdark, with none of the negatives that I had previously bemoaned.
Inquisitor, while probably one of the least conventional of GW's games, is probably also one of the purest. Pulling a quote from Gav Thorpe's original design notes:

"Instead, we wanted to build on the idea that gaming isn't just about a set of rules and some victory conditions. In many ways, my main inspiration was the original Warhammer 40,000 rules - the volume known as Rogue Trader. While demand from games has meant that Warhammer 40,000 is now most certainly a battle game, with armies of dedicated Imperial servants and slavering aliens fighting each other, Rogue Trader was just as much about a single Space Marine taking on a hive gang, or a few space pirates trying to raid the Imperial armoury. It was these small skirmishes, these low-key encounters, that we wanted to bring back to life. After all, in the grim darkness of the far future there is only war, but not all wars are fought the same way".

QuoteI have several people interested in playing, so I've worked up a cooperative campaign to allow each player to control a single character and ease them into the system.  Slowly gathering more resources, I've also started to put together the antagonist's retinue and other threats they'll be up against.
If I may make a recommendation, I personally prefer to start players off with two characters each, as I feel that the multi-character format is fairly ingrained in Inquisitor. (The damage system can come across as very brutal if a player's only character gets completely concussed early in the game).

Inquisitor isn't quite a conventional RPG, and quite a few of its rules favour its unusual PvP format. I can go into the how and why if you're interested, but I don't want to just blast you with a wall of game design theory and put you off.
S.Sgt Silva Birgen: "Good evening, we're here from the Adeptus Defenestratus."
Captain L. Rollin: "Nonsense. Never heard of it."
Birgen: "Pick a window. I'll demonstrate".

GW's =I= articles

Nvision

Quote from: MarcoSkoll on March 01, 2017, 11:48:11 PMIf I may make a recommendation, I personally prefer to start players off with two characters each, as I feel that the multi-character format is fairly ingrained in Inquisitor. (The damage system can come across as very brutal if a player's only character gets completely concussed early in the game).

Inquisitor isn't quite a conventional RPG, and quite a few of its rules favour its unusual PvP format. I can go into the how and why if you're interested, but I don't want to just blast you with a wall of game design theory and put you off.

Please do!  I'm here for the expertise of those already well versed in the game.  RPG-wise, I'm a long time Call of Cthulhu Keeper, and two of my players are veterans of my campaigns.  They're less power-gamers and more narrative gamers, and we dabble in Mordheim as well (wherein I roll many, many 1's).  One of the aspects I'm curious about is how to appropriately scale threat to the number of characters.  I'd like each encounter to be challenging, but not quite push the players to despair.

Lord Borak

WELCOME TO THE FORUM Nvision.

It's always nice to see some new members on the forum :) Even if it is at 28mm scale. ;) A mate of mine has just jumped into INQ28, like yourself, because he loved our 54mm games. So I may be stealing ideas off you in the near future :D

MarcoSkoll

#5
Quote from: Nvision on March 02, 2017, 12:02:19 AMPlease do!  I'm here for the expertise of those already well versed in the game.
Yes, well, I could talk about Inquisitor's game design until the grox came home. I've quite possibly spent more time thinking about Inquisitor's rules than anyone else, including the original designers.

QuoteOne of the aspects I'm curious about is how to appropriately scale threat to the number of characters.  I'd like each encounter to be challenging, but not quite push the players to despair.
Well, at its core, Inquisitor was designed as a PvP game. While it is GMed, the GM is often not the antagonist; while he sets the scene and adjudicates things, it's entirely possible for games to have no NPCs at all.
More often, the primary antagonists for the players will be each other, different Inquisitors (or other infamous personalities) taking their own sides in the Battle for the Emperor's Soul.

This makes GMing be a little unusual compared to more conventional RPGs, but it is actually a very refreshing experience.
My games of Dark Heresy are often fairly predictable to gamesmaster for - I know the general course of the plot from the start and while the players will certainly deviate from that somewhere*, it's all going to end up broadly where I expect unless I inflict a TPK**.
* The previous plot I ran involved an unexpected shopping trip for dresses, but still, the players did eventually work out who the bad guy was.
** I never have so far - my players are in it for the story, and "everybody dies" isn't usually a good story. While characters do die occasionally, if it looks like a fight is going TPK badly, I'll usually let the players try something creative or have the bad guys take them prisoner instead.


With Inquisitor though, any of the players could succeed, meaning even as a GM I am discovering the game as it plays out. Even really simple game concepts can result in outcomes I never imagined.
One of the best games I've ever run just started with the instruction that the players had to work out which of the three of them had sabotaged the plasma reactor they were running away from. (I'd secretly told one of the players he was responsible; he was supposed to escape without getting found out, the other two were supposed to catch them). All three of the players got really into it, coming up with creative ways to extract confessions, spot clues or misdirect blame on to each other; in the end, the culprits were discovered, but chose to be taken for trial rather than try to shoot their way out.

Of course, that's not to say that the GM never plays NPCs or that the players are always enemies. The Inquisitor rules are versatile enough that they can be made to work as a PvE system, but their real unique selling point is for this PvP play.

As I've already sort of mentioned, this shows up most in Inquisitor's damage system. To newcomers, it can seem quite harsh, as it's built on the expectation that players will have more than one character (allowing them to persist even if one of their characters is incapacitated), and also quite detailed, so that players can hinder their opponents without just putting them out of the game. The need for this detail is aptly demonstrated by Knight House armies in WH40k, which are often criticised for being frustrating to play against - you either feel like you're doing nothing, or you take a couple out and it's suddenly really easy.
Having that detail in Inquisitor's damage system makes a player's hits means something, but without finishing fights boringly and unheroically fast. It's not fun for any player if a character goes down too easily.

~~~~~

Naturally, there's still a question of balancing players' characters to each other. However, with some of us having been playing this for 15 years now, there's quite a lot of guidelines and advice on that.

The original random stat generators have rather fallen out of favour - we tend to prefer hand written profiles. Players are much more intelligent than dice (normally...), so they can usually do a better job of writing fair profiles that accurately represent the characters.
We've built up the "Conclave Standard" over time from general experience of what works best. (A link to one of my write-ups on that)

But generally, it's just about having the right attitude. There's no point in winning by bringing the hardest characters (that'd be like bringing 3000 pts to a 2000 pt 40k game), or really in "winning" at all. It's all about playing fantastical characters and having cool stories - it's not about the bragging rights.

And there's nothing to be ashamed of if you do get the balance a bit wrong. If a character doesn't work quite how you intended, go away and change them. Even if you get it catastrophically wrong, the GM is omnipotent - things can even be fixed mid-game (it's a lot better than persevering with something that isn't working).
S.Sgt Silva Birgen: "Good evening, we're here from the Adeptus Defenestratus."
Captain L. Rollin: "Nonsense. Never heard of it."
Birgen: "Pick a window. I'll demonstrate".

GW's =I= articles

mcjomar

Quoteor have the bad guys take them prisoner instead.

This is what I did when I ran a quick zombie-infested intro for a friend in the underhive, and he whiffed the final boss combat of that session.
He revived on half health, guns out of reach, and the villain monologuing. I'm sure you know how the rest of that tale goes.
"Heretics are like cockroaches - annoying to find, and even more annoying to kill." - unattrib.