Play Report: Fate of the Inquisitor

Inquisitors are a dour lot.

After a delay of over two years, I finally ran Fate of the Inquisitor for the first time yesterday at KublaCon.  It was a moral victory to finally be able to do this!

This game is my hack using:

• the rules of War of Ashes: Fate of Agaptus I wrote for Evil Hat Productions (PDF available on a pay-what-you-want basis on DriveThruRPG, and Open Content rules on Fate SRD);
• the Warhammer 40,000 (WH40K) setting,
• particularly  as  presented in the Dark Heresy role-playing game from Fantasy Flight Games/Ulisses Spiele, and
• borrowing the random tables from my husband’s Fiasco 40K playset for, well, Fiasco.

Why? Because on the one hand I don’t enjoy the native system for Dark Heresy, it’s just not my cup of tea; and on the other, we have a bazillion WH40K miniatures which were handy to demonstrate the miniatures rules for Fate from War of Ashes: Fate of Agaptus. 

I had four players, including my husband Edmund. The other three players (the very nice Gregg, Thomas, and Jon) were new faces to us and to each other. Edmund is well-versed in both the WH40K universe and in the Fate rules I was using, of course. However, the other players had minimal knowledge of either setting or mechanics. Their role-playing background was primarily from games like D&D or GURPS, and were there to learn about the Fate system. 

Fate of the Inquisitor

TL;DR: Play materials for a Fate hack of Dark Heresy. Enjoy.

A year ago, I was planning on running demo games at conventions featuring the Open Content from War of Ashes: Fate of Agaptus. The Advanced Conflict rules, which are now also available from Randy Oest’s awesome Fate SRD website, are intended to support miniatures as an integral part of of Fate. Since we have approximately 30,000 points’ worth of miniatures in the house — you think I’m kidding, but I’m not — it seemed like the grim, gothic future of the 41st millennium, as seen in the Warhammer 40,000 miniatures combat game and the Dark Heresy role-playing game, was a perfect match.

Of course, health issues soon forced me to cancel my convention plans, but now that I am recovering and convention season is upon us, I decided to go back to packaging the game for quick-start.

First, the pitch:

Fate of the Inquisitor

Inquisitor Lucanus has led you, his retinue, to the Hive World of Corundum IV amidst an ongoing Genestealer invasion to retrieve a priceless relic from the foul xenos. Now the Inquisitor has disappeared during a brutal firefight and the ensuing cave-in, and you are chased by a Genestealer cult. Will you find your master again? Complete his mission? Call for help? Or die bravely but pointlessly?

I made templates for nine types of player characters, using a playbook format like the one used in games Powered by the Apocalypse (PbtA). The rules are pure Fate SRD, but I hope the playbooks make character creation quick and easy for time-constrained one-off games.Each comes with a choice of names, looks, customizable aspects, and stunts. The playbooks include:

• Arbitrator
• Assassin
• Imperial guard
• Ogryn Bodyguard
• Ratling Scout
• Sanctioned Psyker
• Scum
• Sister of Battle
• Tech-Priest

I also modified the appearance of the blank character sheet from War of Ashes: Fate of Agaptus. Then I made a cheat sheet of the Advanced Conflict rules I am using, and a table sign. All of these are available on Google Drive.

• Character Playbooks (Google Doc)
• Blank Character Sheet (PDF)
• Special Rules (Google Doc)
• Table Sign (PDF)

I have not yet put any effort into creating well-formatted single-page folding sheets because I expect mistakes may be pointed out and it’s easiest to update text prior to layout. Also, not a big priority right now.

Your comments are welcomed!

 

RPG a Day: Another PC’s most impressive moment

4. What is the most impressive thing that you can remember another player’s character doing in a session?

I think it has to be in our “Savage” Dark Heresy game when our Inquisitor sent us, her acolytes, to Icenholm on Sephiris Secundus to check if it had been captured by mutant rebels. For the first time we were provided with Penal Legion troops as support, and our Arbitraor Aenid Fraal, played by Laura, was assigned control of the unit, including their bomb collars’ detonators. Alongside Aenid were Tech-Priest Sanctus Machina (Mark), Commandante Rollando Hernandez (John), and Commissar Calpurnia Jemadar (me).

Icenholm, the planetary capital, had fallen silent during the conflict and all contact had been lost with the planetary governor, Queen Lachryma III. We infiltrated the palace-fortress and reached the top floor, where we found the doors to the Throne Room barred from the outside.

When we broke in, it was pitch dark inside, but the moment we opened the door, the red beams of half a dozen lasers swivelled and locked onto the doorway. Three penal troopers were killed on the spot by hotshot lasguns on full auto. Return shots from Calpurnia and Rollando damaged some of the laser sentries. Aenid ordered one of the human bombs to run in and detonate himself, causing more sparks, explosions, and sounds of shattering. All the lasers temporarily went out. Sanctus Machina made his way into the room and located a door terminal to raise the lights.

And we discovered the Throne of Ice, now severely damaged by an explosion. On the floor were scattered Skitarii tech guards of the Adeptus Mechanicus, with three of them getting back up. On the throne was a sprawled, withered body dressed in robes of office of the queen, shot to pieces.

We had killed the planetary governor!

There was a minute pause as we considered consequences. Then our Arbitrator Aenid shrugged, and cheerfully said “Oh, well!” and we exchanged fire with the Skitarii.

It’s funny because Laura, Aenid’s player, is the nicest, gentlest person in the world. The idea that she sent human bombs to go blow themselves up for the Emperor, in the process killed a planetary governor, and just shrugged it off is so outlandish, it’s irresistibly, grandiosely hilarious for us.

#RPGaDay2016

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Credits: Picture is the cover illustration of the Warhammer 40,000 omnibus Enforcer, cover art by Marek Okon.

Fate of the Inquisitor, coming up at KublaCon

EDIT: Cancelled due to illness.

KublaCon is the next big tabletop gaming convention in the San Francisco Bay Area, and it’s held only minutes from where I live. It’s not nearly as strong in the role-playing department as I’d like, so of course the thing to do is add a couple of games to the schedule!

My second game is an adventure for 2 to 5 players set in the grim darkness of the 41st millennium. If you want a Dark Heresy game that uses Fate Core rules and miniatures, this is for you!

I will be using Evil Hat Productions’ Fate Core system and the miniatures rules from War of Ashes: Fate of Agaptus which I am about to adapt as open content for Evil Hat.

Here is the blurb for my adventure; I’m limited to 400 characters for the printed program:

Fate of the Inquisitor

Inquisitor Lucanus has led you, his retinue, to the Hive World of Corundum IV amidst an ongoing Genestealer invasion to retrieve a priceless relic from the foul xenos. Now the Inquisitor has disappeared during a brutal firefight and the ensuing cave-in, and you are chased by a Genestealer cult. Will you find your master again? Complete his mission? Call for help? Or die bravely but pointlessly?

This will give me a chance to put our bazillion WH40K miniatures to good use! Here are some I’m considering offering as characters: Callidus assassin, Escher ganger, Sister of Battle, tech priest, arbitor, Imperial guardsman, scout, space marine, beastman, Ogryn, ratling sniper.

If you are a role-player in the Bay Area and you’re in need of some gaming on Memorial Day weekend, check out one my games, and consider adding one of your own to the schedule so I can play in yours!

Credits: Aquila © Games Workshop; Dark Heresy fan art by Mothmandraws, aka fallenshadow12.

Relic: Stupid Dice!

We played Relic again, the recent release from Fantasy Flight Games; I’ve talked about it in a previous post. That little bastard here, the gargoyle? It was emblematic of how unfair the dice were. We had the classic spread that Edmund was complaining of in a comment on one of my other recent posts on board gaming: the breakaway player who levels up every two or three turns, the middling player just about holding his ground, and me—rolling only 1s unless I’m rolling on behalf of someone else’s enemy, in which case I get 6s. I levelled exactly once.

The gargoyle became the flag-bearer for this phenomenon. With a score of only 2, it should be easy to get rid of, but it rolled two 6s and a 5, handily crushing one player character. Then a second player fought it, and the same thing happened: two 6s and a 5 (rolled by a different player.) Then it was banished by an event and we never got our revenge!

Stupid dice.

It was a Fiasco

I’ve been badgering Edmund to finish some of the game conversions he’s playtested recently, including his transposition of the Blue Rose RPG to Fate Core, and his Fiasco playset for the universe of Warhammer 40,000 and Dark Heresy. Today I decided to throw in a bribe in the form of art for the latter (click on the image for the big version):

And by the way, here are some of his notes from recent games at Good Omens mini-con and Big Bad Con, plus his most recent draft.

Big Bad Con Kaleidoscope

I barely know where to start unpacking after another amazing edition of Big Bad Con.  I have no idea how Sean Nittner and his team managed to top last year’s, but they did.  They have now moved up to anticipating wishes, like Mystic Pizza Delivery on Al Amarja which delivers because their psychics know you’re about to order, or the crime prevention unit in Minority Report who arrest criminals before they commit crimes.

The Bare Bones

(Already posted on social media, but I’ll consolidate here  Edited to link to Edmund’s game summaries.)

Day 1 (Friday)
Ran a game in Rob Wieland’s CAMELOT Trigger setting using Fate Accelerated Edition (FAE) system.  My decision to start with a “pre-credit” sequence in the big climactic battle then jump back in time to a few days earlier didn’t one click for one player, but the others really seemed to like it.  [Edmund’s recap]

Played in my husband’s FAE in a WWI pulp adventure called “An Excellent Vintage.”  Coincidentally, all players were women, Edmund got all the chicks.  We ended up sacrificing ourselves and blowing up with our stolen German airship to prevent a plague engineered by the Kaiser’s scientists from devastating Europe.  A pulp game that ends up with an airship blowing up can’t go wrong.  [Edmund’s recap]

Day 2 (Saturday)
Opened with Games on Demand, where I offered to run either a FAE Muppet Show game or an octaNe game.  Players really wanted to try FAE but weren’t so keen on Muppets so I ended up using FAE on the fly to run the octaNe adventure!  Second time in so many days using Ryan M. Danks’ Fractal Adventure method, worked amazingly well considering this was all improvised.  I think this is the most on-the-fly conversion I’ve done in my entire life, and we had a blast.  [Edmund’s recap]

Played in +Ezra Denney‘s Habemus Papam game which was great fun (the murderer who was eliminating the competition managed to get elected pope, of course.)  My cardinal earned the stunt “Master of Sarcastic Prayer.”

Ran +Emily Care Boss‘ “Colony Wars” series pitch for Robin Laws’ DramaSystem (from Hillfolk, Pelgrane Press), my first actual play contact with the system.  Had six amazing, creative, cooperative, forgiving players put up with my fumbling.  We created the pilot episode for a science fiction drama series on the outer edge of the Asteroid Belt where the main tensions were the unexplained loss of contact with another new colony under construction, and the unrest following a massive influx of immigrants headed for that colony and now stuck on Ithaca station.  [Edmund’s recap]

Day 3 (Sunday)
Three more fantastic games, all hosted by Edmund:

Fiasco: 40K: All four of us were Warhammer 40,000 fans so we had a blast (heheheh, blast…) creating the fiction.  Two secret Eldar cultists, Brother Zealot and Brother Rhakum, the latter vying for a promotion with Technopriest and unsanctioned psyker Electrolux, who in turn had a demoted acolyte for a Servitor, in which was inset a reliquary containing the Bones of the Blessed First One which really turned out to be wraithbone coveted by Brother Zealot.   And an unlimited supply of (defective) frag grenades…  [Edmund’s recap]

Do: Pilgrims of the Flying Temple: Responding to a letter from the Scribing People requesting help against those who would steal their sustenance, the tales they feed on, and leave them nothing but unhealthy songs and poetry to nibble.  [Edmund’s recap]

Fate of Aldis, a Fate Core game using Green Ronin’s setting from Blue Rose; only two player characters (a Rhy-Cat and a Vata’sha both of the Sovereign’s Finest, a.k.a. magical talking cat and Night elf as elite troubleshooters), but picture-perfect best planning and execution of a rescue raid I’ve ever seen in a game.  Neither of us combat characters but fiendishly stealthy, and we still took on a small warband.  [Edmund’s recap]

Absolutely amazing people and amazing gaming all weekend.  At some point, I need to post some of the high moments because there were many worthy of memory, and some reviews.  But since I actually have Fate-related work to do and there were several Fate Core or Fate Accelerated games in my schedule, in my next post I will tackle some of the insights on Fate I received this weekend.

Relic – the game, not the players!

Edmund and I played Relic, the recent release from Fantasy Flight Games, with our friend Steve earlier this week.  If you’ve played the old Talisman board game from Games Workshop, it’s very similar.  Instead of two stats you now have three, and the “flavour” is the universe of Warhammer 40,000 rather than fantasy, but it plays the same way.

I don’t really know why I loved Talisman so much — I can list the things that are wrong with it, but for me it remains a great beer-and-pretzel game.  I guess it’s associated with memories of a lot of fun times with friends.  Really, you’re at the mercy of luck (or poor shuffling of the cards), and you wander around hoping your fellow players will be hit as badly as you are by goofy die rolls.

Anyway, Relic plays the same way but offers a tiny bit more opportunity for strategy.  Not much more, mind you, but it’s still fun.  You know have more choices of gear and options for powers, plus missions to complete in order to acquire “relics”, the WH40K equivalent of “talismans”; and as before, you want to wait until the right time to advance to the end section of the board.  I don’t have too many complaints (at least not ones that would not apply to Talisman as well!), except that the graphic designers have put in way too much purple for my taste!

We finished the day with a few rounds of Race for the Galaxy, a fun and quick card game which I’ve discussed before.  In the end things were pretty fair: I think everybody won a round of one game or another in turn.