So as part of the whole corona scam i ended up being in contact with some (as it so happens) very local folk (some of whom I've met briefly in passing) who were starting a Wrath and Glory (WaG) campaign.
This is a 'Dungeons and Drangon'-esque Role Playing Game (RPG), which is more about stories, maps, and spoken 'adventuring' than it is about miniatures, dice, tape measures and battles.
Over the years i have picked up some rule books for some earlier (same-universe, different authors/publishers etc) precursor games called 'Dark Heresy' and 'Deathwatch' which i never tried, but i enjoyed the artwork.
This was my first time attempting such a game, though it's something i'd wanted to do for quite some time.
Mainly deciding which (of potentially many) hobby activities i could balance equitably (imo) with real-life probably is the main deciding factor. Like all of my hobby stuff it's not a 20 minutes and you're done activity.
Now, with the increasing prevalence of online... well, everything there are myriad opportunities for playing such games online (even for a technophobe like myself).
In our case we started using discord for chat (text typing and viewing map etc) and voice (VOIP), then moving to the roll20 site which allowed easier and fancier 'map work' and also voice (though noticeably heavier on the data usage).
So, to date, we have had four sessions, all on a Friday night, and in generally it has been quite entertaining.
For those not familiar with the process at all, you create a fictional character and start by setting some stats for in-game interaction (maybe combat, maybe investigation, maybe stealth or scholarly abilities for example).
You can also create things such as background, character motivations or personality, history etc. basically the 'your guys' stuff but for a single 'your guy'.
Then during they session you decide (verbally) where your characters (usually there's a group of you) are going to go, and Game Master (GM) describes any relevant settings, features or happenings.
There is a combat element to the game (so virtual dice) but this is only a side aspect (imo), though to be fair a lot of the investigation type stuff does direct you toward hostile settings, so it's still very much a part of the environment. It would potentially be possibly to have a non-combat adventure but the nature of the environment (and it's wh40k we're talking about here) is hazardous.
For the non-gamers...
An example of non-combat activities you might say, "i'm going to investigate that cupboard." The GM says, "do an 'investigation' check." You roll a dice and if you roll better than a certain value you might find something interesting about or in 'the cupboard'.
In this particular system there are degrees of success and if you exceed the required value by 'a lot' then you might find extra clues or stuff as part of your action.
As another example let's say you need to obtain a clue that is in a safe, so you might say "i'm going to attempt to pick the lock." The GM says, "do a 'tech' check." If you fail you might say, "i'm going to try to break the lock." The GM says, "do a 'strength' check." So there are multiple attributes that you can access and you'd pick either your best option or the option most suitable to the situation.
Generally you don't keep retrying something until you succeed. I don't know why but it seems to be the etiquette [going to ask the question... question asked... answer received - below]. There's also degrees of difficulty within this system, so if you try to 'pick the lock' the GM might say you need a roll of 5 or higher, and if you attempt it again, they might say you need a 7 or higher etc. Never tried that but it might be an option.
Answer from the GM: "You can do it multiple times but if it was multiple fails in a row as a
GM I would personally say you break the locks/set off alarms/force a
lockdown/etc. For this party though you're all pretty much capable of
kicking in even a heavily secured door, so why wouldn't you try that next."
Great. So?
This particular game system allows the characters to be pretty much any in-universe species/faction you could want (not sure if you can be a tyranid or a necron, probably not, but most others seem catered for to an extent).
However, true to form, i opted for the familiar; Space Marine.
Specifically i stat'ed up a Black Templar to tie in to my totemic Epic army.
I had no particular plan of what, if at all, i'd be able to 'write' with this endeavour but part of the hobby is just trying it and seeing what comes out sometimes.
As the sessions have unfolded i ended up writing some 'diary notes' or communiques between my character and his 'mentor' back in the fleet (i.e. the guy who sent him on this quest). I back-wrote some history and a reason for his deployment at this location etc.
The fiction-writing/mind-work aspects i probably find as, or probably more enjoyable than smearing paint around. It's something you can come back to and tweak, polish, fix spelling and grammar at any time and at any place, and there's no messy cleanup [ba doom tsh].
[There he is. My BT army's Sword Brethren squads.]
I'm adding links to the articles i've written here, mainly so i can access (and tweak) them from a central location.
A quick summary of the campaign background...
"The campaign(/adventure) is set on a planet called Tagia Prime.
The planet's primary commerce is mining radioactive materials, and is overseen by representatives of the Mechanicum.
The city experiences periodic asteroid storms and structures are reinforced to withstand these.
A local preacher requests investigation of the local population, aimed particularly at the mutants, who are generally tolerated because of their ability to work within the radioactive mines and they provide cheap labour.
Mutants including children are turning up dead with greater frequency (for a 40k setting planet).
Within recorded history the settlement was occupied by a band of renegade chaos marines called the warp ghosts and liberated by forces of the Mechanicum."
Reading between the lines: The planet is something of a industrial backwater of interest only because of the accessibility of minerals. The population is highly irregular but because they're cheap (read expendable) the mining operators don't give a crap as long as the quotas are met... oh, that sounds kinda familiar...
[for the non-gamers: Mechanicum, also called Mechanicus, short for Adeptus Mechanicus is a 'branch' of humanity within the setting. They tend to obsess about machinery, technology and gizmos. There is a tonne more fluff to most aspects of this.]
Conclusion - 2020-05-29
The last session (postponed by a week) was (probably) the last one for the campaign (Session 6), where we having pretty much reached the end of the plot.
Although we were in a collapsing cavern we escaped just in time (in a raiders of the lost ark moment) and technically avoided the classic 'rock falls everyone dies' conclusion.
However, as we emerged from the tunnels we were greeted by a pack of Grey Knights, notorious for mind-wiping or liquidating anyone who sees them in order to keep their existence secret (nerd fluff explosion). As such i do not yet know the ultimate fate of Fredii Tuulan though hopefully his updates made it back to the fleet - pretty much waiting for the GM to reveal this at some stage.
Epilogue and Followup - 20200610
So our GM gave us a neat wrap up (see Epilogue) with new twists and possibilities for the future. Fun!
In response i just wrote the 'fleetStatus' article (very, very final fluff for this experience). The bottom line being that the fleet sends an advance force to follow up on Tuulan's messages and disappearance, and discovered a Virus Bombed planet but no Tuulan. They suspect Inquisitorial intervention but they aren't going to discover anything worthwhile. With the planet apparently taken care of it's off to find another combat zone.
Tee-shirt
At one stage (around session 2) the GM suggested (possibly heading towards exasperation), "You don't actually have to kill everyone," and later posited the term "murder hobos," in our general direction... something like, "are you done at this location or are you going to punch on like murder hobos?"
Given we were generally new to the mechanics of the game, things maybe migrated towards the conflict side of the spectrum more than they could have - i'd plead inexperience and/or ignorance rather that raw psychoticness.
Anyway i thought an appropriate working title for the group might be "Rizzle's Friday Night Murder-Hobos" with a catch-phrase "Suffer not the NPC to live." Which i actually had made up into a tee-shirt.
[NPC - Non Player Character - characters in the story not controlled by the players, i.e. controlled by the GM. The general denizens of the locale; sometimes people you're meant to interact with, sometimes like extras in movies.]
Pretty sure the issue was actually us...
...though to be fair from then on we did attempt to ensure things were as... civilised as we could manage.
Just an amusing something something...
Until next time...
