[Whiley Burp]

Well howdy fellas

       I have been ghosting the conclave for a while now, as I have always been interested in Inquisitor but haven’t really gotten my head around playing, as I am new to this whole thing of ‘narrative gaming’ and my several attempts to get to grips with the game itself and the narrative aspect of it have, I wouldn’t say failed, but weren’t as fruitful as I thought they would be. The first few games that my buddies and I played were slow and clunky, but that is too be expected considering that there are more than a few rules, probably didn’t help that I added to many NPCs as well. But this site has reinvigorated my interest in the game, and so hopefully my second stab at it will prove more fruitful.

      Anyways I think one of the main areas I went wrong the first few times was having way too many characters on the board at the same time, and trying to play with all the NPCs and my own warband was very tasking. I also found it hard to figure how big the gaming area should be, and vastly overdid it, so that a game would take about five or six hours…and by the end of it our heads were pretty darn numb. Quite foolish, but as I say, I was trying to figure out how big games were supposed to be, since the rule book doesn’t really  go into that, and the few White Dwarfs we had didn’t really either.
     
      I was wondering what you fellas thought about this here first mission in a linked campaign that I am thinking of starting up if I can round up the followers for another go at it.
   
      Background: Strange rumors of cult activities and recent disappearances of high officials on the world of Aegis Prime, has spurred Lord Inquisitor Devaki to investigate. The plan is that he and his two inquisitor acolytes will initially infiltrate the planet and play it low key and hide their true identities, while they investigate the extent of the cult, if one exists, and the nature and circumstances of the disappearances.
     
      Outline: Having arrived planet side Lord Inquisitor Devaki and his acolytes, have stashed their gear in one of the many seedy hotels/apartments that line the lower level hive. They soon head out to meet one of Devaki’s contacts in a crowded market square.

      Objective: Meet the contact and ensure the protection of him and both Devaki while they talk.
   
      Player Characters: Each player will control one of Devaki’s two acolytes. (Haven’t really come up with a name or anything for these dudes, as I will let the players largely make up their own characters and then tweak them to fit more snuggly into the game) Both acolytes will be lightly armed and armored, with a basic two handed weapon, or a basic pistol and close combat weapon.
   
      As the game begins they will be walking on their way to the market square, meanwhile Devaki will be telling them more in depth information and solid information about the cult and the extent of it when a lone shot booms out and hits Devaki in the chest. And as he falls the district turns to chaos with men and women shouting and running in all directions. The new objective will then, obviously be to try and find the sniper in the throng of the crowd and either capture him alive, or take him down.
   
      Alright let me know what you guys think about it and any tips for a first timer like myself would be greatly appreciated.
And let me say it is great to be part the ‘clave.

[Kaled]

As a general rule, 2-3 players each with 3-4 characters plus a GM and no more than 10 characters on the table in total (including NPCs) is a good size for a game and will take an hour or two to play. Even as an experienced player/GM I would shy away from making the game larger, and if you're just starting out a smaller game would better. A couple of short fast paced scenarios is almost always preferable than one big game - big games are almost always slow and usually get boring buy the end.

[RobSkib]

Welcome to the Conclave!

Big Yellow Welcome aside, it sounds like you have all the foundations you need for a kick-ass campaign. However, as you've stated, it looks like you've stumbled across a few common problems. Unfortunately, most of these will be ironed out with experience at playing and GMing (I'd recommend taking it in turns with your gaming circle so that you can all have a shot), but we'll help however we can.

First up, having plenty of NPCs in a game doesn't need to slow the game down, so long as you play them effectively. One thing I've learnt is that the majority of NPCs don't (and shouldn't) have character sheets, as this slows the game down to a crawl. Have a look at MarcoSkoll's massive uploaded pack of Inquisitor files (available from his sig) and look at the Architecture of Hate three-parter. That has some wonderful rules on how to streamline NPCs in your games and will really speed things up.

Again, the size of the board is open to debate, some like small boards, others (like myself) enjoy larger gaming experiences, but everything is obviously limited by the amount of space and terrain you have available. I've found that it's best to narrate the story to a point where characters are literally about to turn the corner and bump into each other or just about to draw guns and then begin the game from there. Quite often my games had a good hour of just 'wandering' time, where characters bumbled around aimlessly waiting to  engage with each other.

I've also discovered that with two players (and one of them GMing) it's wise to have a sort of 'buffer' player - a bunch of NPC mooks, cultists, goons etc that will act as the catalyst between two warbands. Quite often people get close to fighting but then decide otherwise, which is no fun! As a GM, what you say goes, so if warbands are becoming too chummy with each other, suddenly a concealed sniper reveals himself and fires at the lead member of each warband! The two warbands obviously now think that the other has lead them into a trap and begin gunning each other down with gleeful enthusiasm (and if they don't, you're the GM! You TELL them that it's time to start gunning each other down )

Lets see some character sheets as well so we can get an idea of your power level and see if we can provide any helpful pointers for that. Also, are you playing at 54mm or 28mm?

[Whiley Burp]

   Alright, thanks for that Kaled, yeah I learned the hard way how many is too many. Hahah we had like 14 characters in our third game and it just dragged on and by the end of it we were happy to be done, not going to make that mistake for a while. I was thinking for the first few missions in the campaign the players would control just one character, to get a feel for them etc. and then as the campaign moves on they gather a warband around them of around two or three goons, which will hopefully cut the game time down from six or seven hours down to one or two.
   
   Thanks for the info there Rob, will have to have a good gander through the articles after my university work cools down. I think I will start from trying to have some semi small boards for the first few games after the results of my last attempt at it, in which the board was way too big.

   Regarding the two characters, at this stage anyways, they are only novices under the direction of Devaki. so probably not the best stats, I would say around fifties or sixties at best for WS and BS. But nothing is solid yet, and so will have to get back to you on the character sheets.

   At the moment we are just using 28 scale, but if it really gets going then we may start to get into 54 for the sheer amount of character that they have compared to 28.

   Thanks for the info their fellas, much appreciated. I will make sure to get back to you about the character sheets, but for now I will leave you with the second mission in the game, as it has been floating around in this noggin of mine and I haven’t been able to get it out of my thoughts.

   Background: With the death of their leader, the so far unnamed novices decide it is time to call in some reinforcements. However when they return to their lodgings they find that both their room and belongings have been ransacked and any and all items of value have been stolen from them. With only the weapons and money on their person and no way of getting word out to high command, they decide to retreat deeper into the lower levels of the hive.

   A few days after the death of their master, they receive on his PDA a message from his contact arranging a new meeting with the novices regarding information on who may have been behind the death of their master, in exchange for protection from a local gang whose dealings he has seen fit to trifle with. With the meeting arranged inside one of the many scummy bars, they decide to enlist some local muscle for the protection of the informant.

   Objective: meet the informant and escort him off the board.
   
   Each player will now get to control both his novice and a new character. 

    I am thinking of making an enmity between the two inquisitors and they don’t see eye to eye etc. so they split up and each player must try to get the informant off in the control of their band, so that they are trying to keep the informant out of the hands of the other inquisitor as well as trying to fight off the gangers.
   Let me know what you guys think.