Silver Tower RPG?

[MacDuff]

I found the old Warhammer Quest RPG rules as a PDF on the net (it's easy to find with Google). I think a lot of it can be easily modified for Silver Tower. The first thing I've thought about is adding the idea of getting gold (Ur Gold now) for kills. Pretty much everything in ST is in the old RPG book with a gold value. I've been keeping track of gold for characters on their stat sheets, which is also cool because it creates a record if what monsters each hero killed. The next idea I'm toying with is letting you keep ALL skill and treasure cards after each dungeon crawl, and be able to sell treasure (at about 25% of value), and freely buy different items. For skills, you could 'sell' a skill card you want to let atrophy, and 'buy' new skills (via training).

Having a monetary system lets you explore the realm based on the last tower quest (getting away to find another Realmgate), and do the kind of encounter transactions we had in the old RPG book. For the encounter and town events, in an ideal world some ambitious (and more lore wise) person could tailor the encounter tables for each realm, keeping the basic effect but creating fluff-appropriate events for each realm. This would be no small thing, because you'd have to invent a lot of the everyday life in realms, but it would give AOS that human every-day perspective we're all craving.

[Walt]

Interesting ideas! The traveling and shopping between games was always great fun. I was thinking along the same lines. I would also like to try to really roleplay with the new tiles. So making up a floorplan and an adventure and be the GM, like it was in the old roleplay rules. Maybe combine old and new tiles, but use the new combat rules. 

p.s. if you ever come up with the gold values for the new items, please post them here so i can steal them :-) 

[MacDuff]

I ‘m starting to expand this roleplaying idea now that I see there is interest in adding RPG elements to create a new Warhammer Quest system for Silver Tower. This expands on the idea above, but is still very much an unplaytested work in progress. I’d love to see what other ideas people come up with.

BUILDING A DUNGEON: I really like the GM idea above, of building a whole dungeon from tiles. An actual GM could do this, or you could just shuffle the Exploration Cards and, starting with the Ingress Chamber, draw as many and place at any and all exits as you do now, repeating the process as you exit a chamber, and placing more chambers until you have a dungeon of the size you like (or can fit the table). Just ignore the Vanishing Chambers rule – the Gaunt Summoner has changed the rules this time, as he can always do, so every placed chamber will ALWAYS remain. If you do this, your party can split up and keep going, and your heroes aren’t ‘cleared away’ because this is very undesirable for an RPG. This will also give more room for combat since small two-hero teams might break away when players desire.

CREATING AN EXPERIENCE SYSTEM: WQ used gold as their ‘experience system’, to reward all monster kills, and since we have Ur Gold, it is realistic to expect that each monster might carry some and the hero who killed it would snag it afterward (no special action required). (This would be in ADDITION to gaining a point of Renown each time a hero kills an enemy, so the Renown system would work as it does now.) I looked through the old WQ RPG book, and came up with these values that were used before (with a bit of minor fudging, but you could look for other gold value entries in the RPG book if desired):

400 Ogroid Thaumaturge

200 Tzaangor

100 Acolyte

300 Flamer

900 Exhalted Flamer

300 Pink Horror

100 Blue Horror

20 Brimstone Horror

30 Grot Scuttling

100 Skaven Deathrunner (might be low)

10 Familiar (if caught)

400 Screamer

900 Herald of Tzeentch

1200 Gaunt Summoner

EXITING A DUNGEON: The Silver Tower game begins in Hysh (the Realm of Light), with you collecting a piece of the Gaunt Summoner’s amulet in each quest until you have all of them, at which time you overcome the Silver Tower in Hysh. I particularly liked the part of the Labyrinth of the Lost novel where the Gaunt Summoner created an elaborate illusion to fool the heroes into thinking they had entered Azyr, the Realm of Heavens, but since this tower is in Hysh, after each quest you could have the party exit for an RPG adventure in that Realm (using modified exploration and town tables from the WR RPG book), then having the Summoner draw they inevitably back to a new Ingress Chamber for the next part of the Hysh quest, or have them leave a Settlement and find a Realmgate, but all roads magically lead back to the tower.

After the last amulet piece is gathered, the whole group could adventure in Hysh one last time, but this time finding the Realmgate to the next Silver Tower adventure in Chamon, the Realm of Metal (with revised quest tables – I’d recommend keeping the effects the same, but changing the wording of each encounter so it reflects a different realm. Ultimately you’d need 8 different text setups for these tables, but this is a great area for creative brainstorming in words, which might later inspire terrain building projects for AOS battles. Hopefully people will like this idea and post these updated exploration tables on this thread.

KEEPING ALL TREASURE AND SKILLS:  You can already pass Treasure Cards to another player during a quest, so why not keep expanding this idea? First, don’t discard Treasure Cards after you reach 4 – keep them ALL. Second, after each quest you don’t just keep 1 Skill Card if you have one Amulet shard – keep them ALL (so you can forget them later when you have ‘give’ that skill to another party member by training them and losing its memory – this would take training time, but no cost would be involved. Third, you can also sell Skill Cards by training somebody else in a town. Fourth, after each tower quest, you could buy new Skill or Treasure Cards in a village (Outpost), town (Fortress) or city (Citadel) with your Ur Gold. Since the Realms are such a mess, it seems appropriate to rename these to reflect the need for normal inhabitants to retreat into more fortified locations.

TRAVELING: This is the freeform RPG part of the experience that updates the approaches of the old WQ roleplaying system. Once you leave a Silver Tower (whether this really happens or is an illusion by the Gaunt Summoner hardly matters), your party can decide where they’re going to go, and how far it is to that location.

DESTINATION/TRAVEL TIME/HAZARD ROLLS

Outpost/2 weeks/2 rolls

Fortress/4 weeks/4 rolls

Citadel/6 weeks/6 rolls

HAZARD TABLES: To determine what each hazard is, you roll 2D6 on the Hazard Table, combining the first and second die separately to create a two-digit number. This relates to a Hazard Table entry, with some entries extending the journey time & hazards, and after an entry (or the number of hazard rolls is up), the heroes have arrived at their destination. I’ll put together a revised Hysh table later, once I’ve brainstormed more on that Realm, but if you Google Warhammer Quest RPG PDF, you can see what I mean on pages 15-17. The main inventory effect on these tables is to add or take away Ur Gold, so players will arrive at their destination with more or less to spend.

SETTLEMENTS: There is a lot of detail in the old RPG that would require tons of modification to support the new Silver Tower system, so I propose simplifying it a lot at first. You can stay at a settlement as long as you like, rolling a Settlement Event each day (or until one of you is kicked out). You might want to simplify player options to:

1.       Visit a Trader (buy/sell Treasure Cards – I’d jettison buying weapons, armor, etc. for now because these wouldn’t work with the player character cards in dozens of ways)

2.       Visit a Special Location (a Training Arena to buy/sell Skill Cards & perhaps a Gambling House, an Alehouse for mischief – everybody gambles and drinks in the Realms just because – or a Temple, although the Alehouse has 4 different tables in the RPG for the 4 stock characters and would need a lot of reworking. The Gambling House is easy to update, and even the effects from a Temple are easy to update if you want to add that)

3.       Generate a Settlement Event (2D6 again, a big table I’ll try to update later unless someone does it first)

4.       Pay for daily Living Expenses (Outpost = 1 Ur Gold/day, Fortress = 2 Ur Gold/day, Citadel = 3 Ur Gold/day). Get kicked out if you can’t pay.

SPECIAL LOCATIONS: Not every location has all of these out in the open, since these are dangerous times, and their names might change in different Realms (Ghur, the Realm of Beasts, might have a Distillery, Ghyran, the Realm of Life might have a more sophisticated Brewery, or whatever). Each of your heroes must individually roll for each Special Location you include, to see if they find it: Outpost = 7+ on 2D6, Fortress = 7+ on 3D6, Citadel = 7+ on 4D6, although in all types of settlements everyone will find an Alehouse. If a character doesn’t find a different Special Location, they waste that day but can try again the next day.

CATASTROPHIC EVENTS: After two weeks in a settlement you roll 2D6 on a Catastrophic Events Table, adding the dice together. This reflects how dangerous the Realms are, and a few should be modified, such as 2=Settle Down (you don’t want to permanently end your character’s career, so perhaps Romantic Interest costs you 1 random Skill Card as you forget something important because of a romance), while Attack, Disease, and Plague can kill your character, but might instead cost you 1D3 of Skill Cards instead. The lesson here is that the longer you stay, the more you risk losing some of your skills.

BUYING AND SELLING TREASURE CARDS: We now have 27 Treasure Cards (including the ones in the app), and they are all one-use. There isn’t a direct equivalent in the RPG locations that sell weapons, armor, arrows, and animals, and the Wizard’s Quarters only lets you buy random 1-use potions from a table. What might work is buying a Treasure Card for 200 Ur Gold, and selling one for 50 Ur Gold. In a playthrough of quest one I had these Ur Gold earnings using the table above – Knight Questor (1100), Fyreslayer (900), Mistweaver (300 – got the amulet shard), and Darkoath Chieftain (1600 – he killed the Gaunt Summoner). Given that each could gain or lose some of this in encounters on the way and inside settlements, it seems each could buy a few new treasures after the first quest, and expand from there.

BUYING AND SELLING SKILL CARDS: We also have 27 Skill Cards (including the ones in the app), but they are multi-use and really customize each character. In the RPG PDF there are defined Battle Levels, and it costs 2000 gold to go up a level, with improvements to Toughness and Wounds, but the player stat cards would immediately get out of date if we did this. Instead, the Skill Cards will work but might want to be priced at 1000 Ur Gold to buy (train) in a new skill, and 250 to train someone else (‘sell’/i.e. forget) a Skill. This lets characters get rid of skills that don’t suit their play style, and gain ones that do – but slowly enough that it will take a while to have a number of them. It takes a week in a Settlement for each new Skill Card a hero acquires, which will also increase the risk of a Catastrophic Event if players overdo it.

ADDING A LUCK CHARACTERISTIC: As Skills increase, a hero’s senses would be logically sharpened, and this can be reflected by getting a number of dice rerolls (for a character’s 4 hero dice, combat, save, or agility rolls, or even destiny dice!). During a tower quest, players acquire Skill Cards the hard way, through the trial of combat. During Settlement Training, they can add new skills, but the RPG system needs again to be changed, perhaps adding 1 reroll for every 3 Skill Cards a hero possesses. This would create another player choice: do I sell my Skills to buy Treasure Cards, or do I hold onto useless ones because I’ll get a reroll?

CREATING PLAYER STAT SHEETS: Because the Silver Tower app won’t support all these new tracking needs, like a real RPG, you’ll want to make a stat sheet for each character, including their name, Alliance, Current Realm of the ST, Renown acquired, Ur Gold collected, Luck rerolls, Skill Cards collected, Treasure Cards collected, Amulet parts collected, special abilities gained via Renown, and perhaps a body count. I find that it is a lot of fun to also write down the types of enemies each character has killed, as it fills out their personal story even more.

GAME BALANCING AS HEROES LEVEL UP: Since you are going to unbalance the ST game as you create more powerful heroes than normally possible, there are a few balancing tricks you can try. At lower levels of this new progression approach, you MUST take Exotic Adversaries whenever that choice comes up on Encounter Tables. At a second tier of progression, you could DOUBLE the number of enemies on any table, or add a second Encounter Table roll when you only have one (such as the Ogroid Thaumaturge). Finally, at even more advanced levels, your party could encounter another group of hostile adventurers. Now with the new Silver Tower cards, it’s entirely possible to create a hostile adventure party of Fyreslayers, Bloodbound, Stormcast, wizards/sorcerers/necromancers, assassins, mixed Chaos or Order warriors, Skaven, or Orks/Grots. Party size could also range from 2-4, but all of these mixes will have different power levels, so running normal adventures with them first as your heroes might help in determining their relative power levels. And with a large and permanent dungeon, you don’t need to cram everybody in the same chamber!

NEW ENEMY STAT CARDS: Since we now have 44 additional Hero Cards, these hostile adventure parties would use those, instead of the simplified ones the adversaries use now in Silver Tower. This means you don’t have to revise anything, and they have their own Destiny Dice pool and fight the same way you do, making these formidable adversaries indeed!

NEW ENEMY BEHAVIORS: You can randomize the behavior of each member of this opposing exploration party by rolling D6 and using the six behavior tables at the end of the Guidebook (but not the Gaunt Summoner table), or create your own. Some existing behaviors might not apply, but hey, the enemy adventure party is surprised and confused and comes up with a behavior they can’t do (just ignore it and reroll, or have them lose a turn as you keep leveling up)!

FUTURE WARHAMMER QUEST EXPANSIONS: As new dungeon crawls are added by GW, they will all have new adversaries and corresponding Encounter Tables. There’s no reason why the Gaunt Summoner wouldn’t add these monsters to his ‘collection’, so over time every one of these expansions could increase the diversity of enemies you can fight in Silver Tower.

Anyway, this is just a broad outline of some of the RPG ideas we could apply to Silver Tower. In the spirit of this new version of Warhammer Quest, it is scoped down to fit a new audience and still gives a tingle to us old-timers. Hopefully this will inspire others in the community to add a growing list of new ideas!

[Walt]

Cool stuff @MacDuff I like the storyline that no matter what the heroes do or try, they always end up back in the silver tower. I have an idea in which the rpg-campaign starts with an adventure with the old tiles. It tells the story of the heroes looking for the entrance ance to the tower. The second deep would be new tiles, 'cause they found the hidden portal to get into the tower. They would then gather the 8 fragments, leveling up as they go. You could come up with a new action for each heroe when they level up. It would be a permanent thing they can spend an actiondie for. Maybe they get it after 5000 killpoints or something. 

I really like the idea of using the heroe cards/theapp for adversaries. I see a cool fight against an evil grombrindal. His heroecard from the sept. Issue of white dwarf is waaay overpowerd, making him an excellent endboss.

[MacDuff]

Hey Walt, you got me thinking. I have the old WQ tiles, so what about having 2 dungeons, each in a different realm, but hooked together thru those blue portal markers? If you dodge into a portal, you're in a realm in a different dimension, ideally with different monsters. Same rules apply for most things, but maybe you use solo wandering monsters from the hero cards as I mentioned above. Heck, you could even have an arena (the Gorechosen board), where you pit 2 of your gang against 2 monster heroes. You might have to fudge the alternate reality dungeon tiles around to avoid overlap, but it would sure make for larger dungeons. Seems like the Gaunt Summoner would do for giggles.

[Walt]

Yo @MacDuff sorry for the late reply. I think switching between realms is a great idea. The blue portal doorways make sense for that, as they don't normally come in to play in the regular silver tower game that much. I've painted up the starting box for aos and havn't had a good excuse to use the bloodbound in the box. They would be great for populating a dungeon, maybe in the realm of fire. I also own an old heroquest box so i could put some furniture in. I have a holiday comming up with some people in a holiday house. Maybe i can persuade them to be the victims of the gaunt summoner? Mwohahahahaa

[MacDuff]

Please let us know how it goes with your victims.

[MacDuff]

It seems the PDF link I mentioned above is gone now. Does anybody know where the old WQ RPG book can still be found? I want to make a monster table for solo SOH.