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New Dawn - 20th May 2017, Dark Sphere

Started by MarcoSkoll, April 15, 2017, 03:21:19 PM

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MarcoSkoll

New Dawn
A one day Inquisitor event at Dark Sphere, London - 20th May 2017

The famous yet notorious Inquisitor Levenson is missing in action, last seen prosecuting the secessionist Dark Sun cult on Maedai.
As one of the Carthax sector's leading authorities on the capture, containment and termination of high level rogue psykers, but also a suspected Istvaanian, accused of severe crimes against his Holy Emperor, Levenson's disappearance demands the attention of both his allies and enemies.


Event Briefing pack (V 0.1 - updated 15th March)
Facebook event page (I'll try to post all important updates over there as well. For those of you who only check the 'Clave occasionally, that may be an easier way to stay up-to-date).

~~~~~

New Dawn is a three-round game day, intended as a playtest for the Inquisitor Revised Edition rules. However, as IRE is largely compatible with the existing LRB, the use of IRE rules will be at the discretion of the organiser of each game table.

I will hopefully release a slightly more refined version of IRE prior to the event.

~~~~~

54mm availability (as of 20th March):

Available:
Cortez
Krenshar
MarcoSkoll
The Nephew

Maybe:
Greenstuff_Gav
jediknight129
LeahO
LordBorak (earlier said he was free, but hasn't answered since I posted, so I'll wait for him to confirm)
mcjomar
Radu Lykan

~~~~~

Behind the scenes:
The first part of the background fluff for New Dawn is actually a Dark Heresy campaign I ran a while back. Don't worry - you won't need to know the story of that though. (That'd be somewhat silly, as none of the original players are attending).

I just had a lot of background from the setting that made for a good starting point for something new.
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

Van Helser

Shared on The Carthaxian Inquisitor Facebook page.

Personally won't be able to attend, but hope the post drags some interest your way.

Ruaridh

MarcoSkoll

Much appreciated.

I wasn't expecting you to be available, but I guess that means you won't have to suffer the shonky early versions of IRE. :P
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

TheNephew

Re-confirming my availability.

I'm aiming to finally get around to building and painting my Talon(?) ganger for a bit of a change in the crew.

Radu Lykan

Going to have to pull it of this. Gutted I can't make it, my wedding anniversary and associated wife time mean I won't be coming. Make sure plentiful pics are taken :)

MarcoSkoll

Noted in both cases.

I hope to get some fluff about the world/characters on the Carthax Wiki sometime soon, in order that players can think about their motivations for the day in advance. I'm not going to make that a promise just yet though - I first want to get the vitals of the day's scenarios sorted and ideally find time to do some preliminary rules tests. (Things like a lot of IRE's modifiers being placeholders at the moment - obviously, fixing that is part of the point of the day, but I'd rather spot any glaring errors in advance. It'll be more fun for all, and a good first impression will be better for IRE's chances of surviving as a ruleset).
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

MarcoSkoll

We are now less than a week away - if any of our various "maybes" have more definite answers, it would help me know how much stuff I need to get printed. (I won't have printer access immediately before the event, as I won't be travelling from home - I have to get things ready a few days in advance).

I may have a slightly updated version of the IRE rules by the event, following some playtesting on my own part. We'll see.
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

TheNephew

Dug out the minis and the character sheets adn found myself a good pencil with an eraser - good to go.

In the process of, I found a mostly-complete Talon that I'll likely never actually get around to doing anything with, which I'll donate for prize support, because why not?
Marco, I'll let you judge if it's a first place or wooden spoon job in the morning.

See you all tomorrow folks.

MarcoSkoll

So - Inquisitor Levenson is dead! His capture was faked, his Istvaanian tendencies showing through in an attempt to test the agents of the Inquisition and draw out his enemies. But his deceit came to a very abrupt end as he was fairly summarily decapitated by the heretic Isabella von Ravensberg - an ignoble end for a once brave defender of the Imperium drawn into the folly of Radicalism.

~~~~~

Thanks to today's playtesters. Although we didn't get any of our "maybe" attendees, three players and a GM proved a very well rounded number for the day, as it allowed me to focus on just one game at a time.

The playtesting seemed to go pretty well; although there were a few specific points which will need fine tuning, the underlying foundations proved to be relatively solid.
Expect to see a more in-depth breakdown at some point in the near future, but right now I'm tired and need time to mentally process everything.
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

Sorry for not turning up, or giving further information.
I forgot it was a birthday party for my niece's boyfriend today, so that's a thing that happened that I had to worry about at the last minute.
Otherwise Inquisitor Morannon might have appeared to try and... investigate.
"Heretics are like cockroaches - annoying to find, and even more annoying to kill." - unattrib.

TheNephew

Good times were had.

I can't think of a more fitting way for a playtest day to end than the use of trial counter-attack rules beheading the campaign target atop a monolithic tower in the center of the board, raining blood and brain-bits over his would-be rescuers.

As I said at the time, I think the Reactions system works excellently, and the other minor edits to the system seem to be positive too.

My two notes would be:
Psi-powers look a little easy to get off (that may just be because Isabella was very good at them, but Cortez said something similar);
Engaged Reactions can easily lead to the improbable occurrance of a Speed 2 old man with a walking stick making seven or eight parries or counterattacks while assaulted by two attackers. My suggestion was/is that you get as many in-combat reactions as your Speed. It seems entirely appropriate that you would eventually be overwhelmed by an unmanageable number of attacks or attackers.

All in all though - dead good V2.0.

MarcoSkoll

#11
QuotePsi-powers look a little easy to get off (that may just be because Isabella was very good at them, but Cortez said something similar)
The difficulties are arguably often higher, as powers no longer get a bonus for having line of sight.

Considerations may be that Hazard fumbles don't automatically cancel the power, and psykers are less likely to lose willpower than before. Those are things that may need to be rebalanced, although I don't particularly want to just crank up all the difficulties, as that will make the rules less compatible with existing ones.

The other thing is that very few of those powers targeted player characters, so we never really saw any nullification or resist reactions.

It's something to think about, but Isabella did fail a few times here and there, and she was supposed to be very powerful, so that may be something I need to see more playtesting on with less formidable psykers before I know how to approach it.

QuoteEngaged Reactions can easily lead to the improbable occurrance of a Speed 2 old man with a walking stick making seven or eight parries or counterattacks while assaulted by two attackers. My suggestion was/is that you get as many in-combat reactions as your Speed. It seems entirely appropriate that you would eventually be overwhelmed by an unmanageable number of attacks or attackers.
The same thing can happen in 1st edition; there has never been a hard cap on the number of parries, dodges or counter attacks permissible.

The difference is, perhaps, that a character's parry chance isn't successively worn down in IRE, but I definitely wanted to ditch the clunky halving mechanic, and I even decided to remove even a straight -10 or so cumulative modifier entirely; It seemed like unnecessary bookkeeping (and it might well even have had to be -5, as every penalty in an opposed roll is doubly evil, because it reduces your chance not only of passing, but of beating your opponent).

The thing is though, a character managing to do that is phenomenally unlikely. We didn't see it any multiple combats, but in IRE, they are lethal (and admittedly a little complicated, which is what I'm more concerned about).

In the LRB, if you were outnumbered two to one, you could attack each enemy one at a time and only that character could respond.
In IRE, you can't do that. Trying to attack one of the enemies allows both of them to react.

A character would have to be extraordinarily skilled to pull that 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

Cortez

#12
All in all a thoroughly enjoyable day yesterday. The campaign was a good one and the outcome was suitably cinematic.

I thought the IRE rules worked well and I can't see any glaring issues at the moment. I particularly liked the way close combat flowed, creating a much more dynamic (and of course cinematic) feel to it, instead of just attack, dodge, attack, dodge (there was still a lot of dodging, but it felt like there was a purpose to the dodging). Parrying was also more useful especially with the chances of a counter attack. In fact there were two occasions where the counter attack drastically changed the outcome with Marco's Rogue trader knocking Isabella straight unconscious in the first game and Isabella taking Levenson's head clean off after parrying his attack in the last game.

I liked the opposed dice rolls and having to beat your opponents score (while still passing of course) meant that it was easy to work out who had won. This was probably the biggest overall change and took a bit of getting used to.

As for psychic powers I do feel that it was a bit too easy to get them off. Isabella is of course intended to be a powerful psycher/sorceress and so has a high wp/sg, but I still felt that it was too easy at times. This was partly my fault as I kept forgetting to make a risky action roll for opening the Tome of Shadows which may have prevented her from using some of the more game changing abilities from the Tome (such as the machine empathy power in the second game or the teleport power to reach Levenson's hiding place). However I think it was mostly due to the powers I was using not really being heavily effected by the psy rating, mostly due to Marco not having had time to look at all the chaos ones yet. Only the teleport power required Isabella to use a psy rating of more than 2 and had I been intending to teleport a longer distance I may have been forced to use a rating of 4 or 5. This meant that Isabella didn't fail a psychic risky action in any of the three games. I think there definitely needs to be some reason/incentive to use a higher psy rating (perhaps an 'optimum' rating level on each psychic power with a 10% penalty for casting below that optimum rating and a bonus for casting at a higher level?). I'll have to consider this further and experiment with some of my other psychic characters.

Edit: I notice that there is a small benefit for casting at a higher psy rating, however it's only 5% and is capped at 1/2 the difficulty. I think it needs to be more like 10% and no cap. I could definitely see myself risking a bigger burst of raw power to achieve that critical power rather than using up actions concentrating

MarcoSkoll

#13
Quote from: Cortez on May 21, 2017, 07:13:56 PMI particularly liked the way close combat flowed, creating a much more dynamic (and of course cinematic) feel to it, instead of just attack, dodge, attack, dodge (there was still a lot of dodging, but it felt like there was a purpose to the dodging).

Parrying was also more useful especially with the chances of a counter attack. In fact there were two occasions where the counter attack drastically changed the outcome with Marco's Rogue trader knocking Isabella straight unconscious in the first game and Isabella taking Levenson's head clean off after parrying his attack in the last game.
Counter attacks are quite often less likely in IRE (as they can be beaten by a good initial attack*), but even a single counter attack can now roll well and get past a defence, so the attacker is not automatically at the advantage.
* An odd consequence of the original rules was that high WS attackers were more likely to be counter-attacked than low WS ones (as only successful attacks allowed a parry). In IRE, a high WS attacker is harder to counter-attack.

And actually, I really liked that. I had had initial concerns about whether the 3+ action rolls would cause a problem where characters could chain a barrage of attacks (the increase to a 3+ roll is partly to offset characters storing reactions, but they don't need to do that while Engaged), but it actually felt less like characters were taking turns to hit each other, even if we saw a fair few cases where characters managed to roll four or five actions in combat. (Don't get me wrong, rolling lots of actions was still important, but WS did feel more important than I).

I am really pleased with the close combat system so far; it's worked far better than I had ever imagined it might.
We saw some close combats that would have been unlikely in 1stE (the brutally quick counter attacks), and others that would have been impossible (by the letter of the 1stE rules, Hella and Isabella's epic duel, stepping aside, phasing through walls, etc, would have just been "dodge two yards back, advance and attack, repeat"). To me, that's a massive success.

QuoteI liked the opposed dice rolls and having to beat your opponents score (while still passing of course) meant that it was easy to work out who had won. This was probably the biggest overall change and took a bit of getting used to.
I'll concede that reversing the margin of success was something took getting used to when I started testing the rules, but it's more a question of unlearning a habit than because it's actually a difficult mechanic.

I may well adapt much the same mechanic as a house rule in some of my other D100 games, as it works very well as far as gameplay. (Although I concede that psychologically if you want to roll under your target number, then rolling lots under your target number feels more impressive).

QuoteHowever I think it was mostly due to the powers I was using not really being heavily effected by the psy rating, mostly due to Marco not having had time to look at all the chaos ones yet.
It's more the case that I didn't want to rewrite every single power until the underlying mechanics were tested. If the core psychic power mechanics proved to be flawed, then all the power descriptions would fall down around it.

On the other hand, I also needed some powers to actually test the rules with - and on that front, the rulebook powers seem a fairly reasonable test sample.

QuoteThis meant that Isabella didn't fail a psychic risky action in any of the three games.
Well, while we didn't have any Perils of the Warp, we did have a couple of phenomena - a "Psy Quake" and a "Dark Foreboding". Neither was hugely dramatic, but they're not supposed to be.

QuoteI think there definitely needs to be some reason/incentive to use a higher psy rating (perhaps an 'optimum' rating level on each psychic power with a 10% penalty for casting below that optimum rating and a bonus for casting at a higher level?).
High psy ratings do reduce difficulties slightly, and it also affects how easy it is to nullify/resist powers, which we didn't have cause to see.

However, the idea of a psy rating threshold could be interesting. The intensity stat could perhaps be reworked that way, so I'll look into it.
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