Jump to content

Trials and tribulations of a DH GM


Olis

Recommended Posts

After a running battle through the docks and slums he stumbled into the rest of the PC's with 2 wounds remaining and 3 angry agents on his heels. Needless to say he promptly made contact and stayed in contact after that :D

:whistling: Absolutely golden. That'll learn 'im to go it alone :devil:

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Having another game tonight. I think I'll try to play it slow since this is our first session for about three weeks. :D

 

@Shoggoth - We don't have that many that regularly play, it usually ends up being me and three players, perhaps four. Rarely does it ever mean I have to deal with 5+ players but I try to compansate when it has happened by moving from player to player relatively quickly. And yes my style is reasonably quick and dirty - I make things up on the fly as best I can and act like things have gone all to plan when players connect dots. ;)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Went quite well tonight. Some of the guys tried their luck at crafting stuff - or more to the point one did while the others found someone to do it for them. For one of the guys he wanted a best quality conversion of his monomolecular sword into a power sword. I told him it'd take quite a while - easily weeks - and it'd also cost him the earth to do it. What he did was basically offer all his decent stuff as barter and I prompted him to make a test for the deal, to see if he could negotiate a cheaper price or something. He scored a '01' on the roll. Critical success. I told him what we'd offered was enough. Later on I had to spend ten minutes describing the sword to him, although, admittedly, the players liked the description enough to covet the sword and the owner told them they'd NEVER get him to part with it (that's a result in my book). :)

 

Also of note was when I threw at the players a duplicate ship scenario (warp based shenanigans). Now the players are a pretty rash lot, in comparison to normal people, so the first plan that came to mind after they'd figured out what was going on was to kill their duplicates. Unfortunately for them the copies had the same idea - they were copies after all. But the best thing about it is this - our Guardsman was totally flummoxed! He didn't know what to do, as his usual MO is to wade in and bash heads. But he couldn't do that to his other self - he had to test him to see if he really was another him. He got on really well with his second self until he got bored. Which took quite a long time, strangely. After that the party had two of whatever they wanted (although I arbitrarily made the 'other' power sword ever so slightly different).

 

The guys really liked tonight's game. :(

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 4 weeks later...
Great stuff and I'm glad to see that it's working well :)

 

Any more updates?

 

Ludovic

 

You're fortunate I'm browsing when you posted, brother.

 

Well, we've lost the Guardsman. The character was caught outside of the ship as the vessel translated into the warp and although he cheekily only had a 01 on a d100 for insanity gained, I had him roll again for corruption (he deliberately looked at the warp itself even though he had made it to an appropriate hatch to get back in) and he scored 80. Exactly the number needed for him to retire his character through corruption. The players new character (think a psychic Ving Rhames with very little compunction to fight) found his old character and looted him for all he was worth. The Guardsman himself was turned into a gibbering wreck that had become emaciated, blood crazed and frothing at the mouth. He couldn't attack his looter because his strength had been so severely reduced that he effectively couldn't get up. Oh... and runes started to etch themselves into his skin. The poor sod was put out of his misery when the Arbiter happened across the wretch and gave him the Emperor's mercy via perforation of the skull (he blew his head off with a point-blank shotgun blast).

 

The new character pawned the vast majority of the old characters stuff (besides the cool stuff made by the armoursmith) and bought a hand-cannon and a servo skull to practice on. The arm protection for the old character was upgraded to have the shocking quality (he used some of his newly gained cash) and next session he's going to be the proud owner of a pair of electro-gloves.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The poor sod was put out of his misery when the Arbiter happened across the wretch and gave him the Emperor's mercy via perforation of the skull (he blew his head off with a point-blank shotgun blast).

That goes straight to my signature :)

 

Anyway, seems like you've got a really fun group together and you seem to be enjoying yourself too, which is even better :P

 

Ludovic

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Yeah... I wasn't really too sure how to deal with a character staring directly at the warp itself volutarily. For a start he was inside a Geller Field and then you have to think whether or not experiencing the transition had any effect... All I could think was "Gee, that wasn't smart. The warp does make people mad when they look at it directly..." Thus the D100 for insanity and corruption. If he was lucky, then so be it. It just so happened that he was just the right amount of unlucky. The player didn't take badly to it, mind. He took it in his stride and, after a proper amount of silence (read: three and a-half seconds) he began to roll up a new character. C'est la vie.

 

But I'll take your advice. Next time it'll be less random. :D

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Teach them early not go go traipsing about alone and it'll save you some hassle in the long run. :devil:

 

I usually play it hard and fast myself, letting players connect dots that weren't necessarily planned out and going with where they bring the storyline. It's worked out great in most systems, with Deathwatch as a startling exception. Personally I prefer that way of running a campaign, keeps the sessions fluid and the players on their toes. But it all boils down to what you do best. The best Gm I've ever played with had ALL the details down and usually knew how the campaign was going to end (badly, in my experience) before we even rolled up our characters. He gave us some leeway, but kept the campaign on tracks with very few deviations from the path he had planned out. I could never run a campaign like that without scaring away players, but he did a great job. Incidentally, running along alone to hunt trolls or do something equivalently stupid usually ended up with a blank character sheet and a slightly confused look on someone's face (who knew these trolls had some Ranger training?).

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Ah yes, letting the players themselves add to the story. It's a beautiful thing when they make connections themselves and all you have done is feed them a story that, if left alone, went nowhere. When they ask you if such-and-such was planned for all along, even if it wasn't, I find saying yes gives them a great sense of satisfaction (it also makes me look a good story-teller, too). Preferably done without a smirk. :lol:

 

The next leg of the story in based on a part of Lady_Canoness' Inquisition III story, well, the bit about a mercenary war, that is (sorry for the thieving plaigerism LC!)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The next leg of the story in based on a part of Lady_Canoness' Inquisition III story, well, the bit about a mercenary war, that is (sorry for the thieving plaigerism LC!)

As long as you cite your sources, it's not plagiarism :)

 

And I'm looking forward to reading what happened to your merry lot :lol:

 

Ludovic

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Those were fun reads! The opening brawl was great! And the shenanigans of the guardsmen were too funny.

 

Makes me glad I purchased some DH books and started roleplaying recently (albeit the GM just told me our group would be put on hold as everyone is busy until basically summer :D )

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Those were fun reads! The opening brawl was great! And the shenanigans of the guardsmen were too funny.

 

Makes me glad I purchased some DH books and started roleplaying recently (albeit the GM just told me our group would be put on hold as everyone is busy until basically summer :D )

 

Glad you enjoyed the story so far. :)

 

Ah. We've had a similar issue over Christmas although, thankfully, we have been doing okay through January and February so far.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...

Okay, so I've been running a Vindicare GMPC for the last few sessions (he's pretty OP compared to the other PC's but he rarely has been proactive up to now) and the thought of him being recalled has struck me. He's already taken care of a high profile target (a compromised Inquisitor) and since then he's merely been tagging along, doing some vaguely impressive feats every now and then (but nothing game changing).

 

Question is: Should I keep running him (he's useful for poking the players back on some sort of track if necessary) and attempt at an overarching plot involving him and his target(s) or should I stick him on hiatus and have him recalled to the Temple?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I figured the reply would be to send him back. I've kinda got attached to him... Oh well. It's time to recall our silent killer. Let's see how the players like this development. <_<
Link to comment
Share on other sites

To be honest, I'm actually surprised that you used a Officio Assassin to do the job, as they are quite a rare sight and a Death-Cult Assassin could have done the trick :)

 

Ah well, your choice after all!

 

Ludovic

Link to comment
Share on other sites

They needed a shock to the system a few sessions ago, a reminder that the Imperium doesn't fart about when someone needs to be come down upon hard. At that time they still were bumbling about randomly killing zombies so I needed someone that'd grab their attention and provide a nudge towards actual usefulness. :)

 

Saying that, you might be right... maybe a Temple Assassin was kinda overkill. ;)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Every once in a while roll some dice behind the screen.

 

When the players start to ask what you're rolling for tell them not to worry.

 

It makes them nervous and builds suspense. :huh:

Throne, I can't count all the times my GM has made me bite my nails because he keeps rolling behind his screen. And then he smiles and chuckles to himself. It's maddening. ;-;

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Throne, I can't count all the times my GM has made me bite my nails because he keeps rolling behind his screen. And then he smiles and chuckles to himself. It's maddening. ;-;

The hallmark of a good GM- the one who gets you emotionally involved via any means necessary ;)

 

On the rare occasions I've GM'ed, I've done this myself. And I can tell you, I was actually rolling for something, I wasn't just messing with the players' heads ^_^ I wanted to see how things behind the scenes were playing out and how they'd affect the characters. And, as usual, my dice rolled very appropriately ^_^

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Throne, I can't count all the times my GM has made me bite my nails because he keeps rolling behind his screen. And then he smiles and chuckles to himself. It's maddening. ;-;

The hallmark of a good GM- the one who gets you emotionally involved via any means necessary ;)

 

On the rare occasions I've GM'ed, I've done this myself. And I can tell you, I was actually rolling for something, I wasn't just messing with the players' heads :ermm: I wanted to see how things behind the scenes were playing out and how they'd affect the characters. And, as usual, my dice rolled very appropriately ^_^

The only thing worse than watching our GM roll for the enemies, is watching him roll for our allies. My bro GMs a game and at the time, we had a Guardsmen with us, flying our Valkyrie. When he rolled behind the screen and went "Oh. Well that's not good." We ended up falling 3 meters out the back of our bird. *sighs* I took the most damage and we hadn't even gotten into combat yet. My poor Psyker. ;-;

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

By using this site, you agree to our Terms of Use.