Shadows over Hammerhal Questions

[Greyshadow]

So, our heroes are currently facing off against the Gaunt Summoner after collecting all eight of the amulet pieces. Soon, Sigmar be praised, the Silver Tower will be know more.

I am asking myself should we move on to Shadows over Hammerhal? I have a few questions for those who have played it:

1. Some times chance in Silver Tower created absolutely thrilling encounters other times it could be a bit of a slog. Will Shadows be too much more of the same? Is it different enough to keep us interested?

2. I am not really put off by having a games master and I like the idea of less combat based activities (i.e. Cinderfall). We also have an experience RPG GM in the group who may be willing to GM. Is it a fun experience for the GM?

3. We did find it hard to get four regular players together to play Silver Tower let alone five. Do you have any advice for manage absences?

4. Can you swap out the characters in the party for others or is it really a story about the characters that come in the box?

Interested in any other advice or comments about getting the most out of this game too.

Thanks!

[Jefferson Skarsnik]

SoH is pre-written and not randomised, so between that and having a GM to guide/rejig things it's easier to not get stuck in a slog where you wait four hours to finally open the boss room like in Silver Tower

I only GM'd one session of Hammerhal and found it fairly fun, even if you may want to embellish some details and make bits of it more roleplay focused. Some of my group weren't playing miniatures from the box and it's not that big a problem to substitute them. What I did was do a little precis of the short story from the rulebook that sets up the dungeon crawl, using some of the incidents as a little tutorial to teach the combat and movement mechanics. As part of that I figured out which characters logically subbed in for the ones they weren't playing and came up with a reason for them to be together as a party. There's no rules incompatibility with subbing in any of the other available WHQ character cards, but some of the characters are much more balanced or fun to play than others.

Main thing is if you don't have a stormcast character, someone needs a reason to be following/be the owner of the gryph hound, who does need to be included for plot purposes

For managing absences all I've done is let players joining an established party take one or two skills or items to help them be on a level with the other players. The WHQ games are a big time commitment and it is hard to complete a whole playthrough with one group, especially if people get fatigued by Silver Tower's unpredictable slogginess - having a GM to make sure it stays fun and breezy or end sessions at a logical point may help with Hammerhal

 

Edited October 28, 2019 by Jefferson Skarsnik

[Greyshadow]

One of the best things we did with Silver Tower was not to try and finish a quest in a single sitting. We just took a photo of the board and set it up exactly as was when we next got together.

The difficulty of getting five players to commit is the biggest barrier for our group. My impression from Silver Tower is that it would definitely play best with five. Four was hard to get together, five would likely require us to have six or seven players to have some back up when someone is unavailable.

Thanks for your comments @Jefferson Skarsnik, your advice is much appreciated.