Lets talk about: Shadows Over Hammerhal

[Greasygeek]

On 18. februar 2017 at 3:00 AM, Rodiger said:

The rules are in the 'extra adversaries' thread, I re-uploaded them as the link had stopped working for some reason. I haven't play tested them, I don't have enough time to do that really or most of the models, please test them and tell me what you think, it's supposed to be a living document so changes can be made. They might be a better fit for Hammerhall.

I am currently working on the Changeling and a few others as Exotic Adversaries but  I will most likly end up testing your Nurgle and Khorne stuff. I am very much looking forward to write my own missions for Hammerhal. Missions that will need all kinds of nasty new adversaries. But I gotta complete the Tzzentch stuff and get the hang of SOH before making my own stuff or testing others so I fear it won't be anytime soon. However I will be sure to let you know what I think and give them a tweak if needed then. 

[Double Misfire]

Unboxing with loads of info over on War of Sigmar:

https://war-of-sigmar.herokuapp.com/bloggings/1731

[MacDuff]

A lot of excitement on various boards about this. The wider RPG appeal is resonating.

[Itzaril I'ichi]

Personally the GM doesn't suit me, I hope it has an inbuilt way to play solo.

[Riavan]

So I've heard it contains rules for some more adverseries. Like plaguebringers and blood warriors. How many models do these need?

Just wondering if I can buy a pack of the easy to build blood warriors or st acolytes off eBay cheap.

[MacDuff]

In the GM book it says you can also use with the included rules 2D6 Blood Warriors (up to 10), 5 Wrathmongers, 2D6 Tzaangors (up to 10), 3 Tzaangors Skyfires, and 2D6 Plaguebearers (up to 10). Those are the max of those models you'd need. The Kairic Acolytes, Putrid Blightkings, and Bloodreavers need no more than are in the Hammerhal box.

[Itzaril I'ichi]

11 hours ago, MacDuff said:

In the GM book it says you can also use with the included rules 2D6 Blood Warriors (up to 10), 5 Wrathmongers, 2D6 Tzaangors (up to 10), 3 Tzaangors Skyfires, and 2D6 Plaguebearers (up to 10). Those are the max of those models you'd need. The Kairic Acolytes, Putrid Blightkings, and Bloodreavers need no more than are in the Hammerhal box.

You sound like you have it. How integral is the GM, can it be played solo? Does the gm need to hide things or reveal secret events when a particular thing happens, or do they just serve to control the enemies in place of the behaviour tables?

[MacDuff]

I've been puzzling over this because I like to play solo, so I cheated and poured thru the GM book. Even with my game design background, it would require a totally different configuration of the pieces to make it solo, and the end result wouldn't be the same player experience. This is because the 8 dungeon levels are laid out with room keys describing a linked series of visual and hidden clues. Some require the new search option to find a hidden object, some require standing on a specific square on the grid to find a hidden portal (sometimes leading to a level two-down, so you can even play some levels in a different order!), or trigger a trap, and some clues (such as blood on the floor) tell observant players something bad is in the next room. Each level is nicely laid out for the GM with a two page spread, so even though there are random tables, it's hard to avoid seeing all the clues and descriptions on the pages. The best bet is to play with a GM first to have the scripted experience, then randomize rooms per level like ST, use a random dice roll to trigger clues, treasure, traps, and hidden things on specific squares, and use the AI tables but increase the probability of Exotic Adversaries for more variety. The above ground town adventures should work just fine without a GM however. You could even use bad guy hero cards for new mini-bosses down below, sans destiny dice and Renown gains (they'll be hard enough as it is). When folks talk about GMs creating new dungeons, I'm sure you'll see these and other tricks used. So this isn't a solo game, but with a little work, and hopefully mods that get published here, this is a great sandbox for dungeon creation. The story of Hammerhal is such that you could also add ST rooms and corridors with ease, suggesting hidden Tzeentch enclaves.

[richstrach]

I love Silver Tower and it's very much a solo experience for me, so I think I'm going to track down just the Hammerhal tiles and books on ebay and develop my own random dungeon generator, possibly using it as a prequel to the heroes being sucked into the Silver Tower. If the Cinderfall/above ground stuff works well without a GM that's a bonus as well. The campaign aside, it sounds like it could be a good sandbox for designing your own stuff.

[MacDuff]

On February 28, 2017 at 3:22 PM, MacDuff said:

In the GM book it says you can also use with the included rules 2D6 Blood Warriors (up to 10), 5 Wrathmongers, 2D6 Tzaangors (up to 10), 3 Tzaangors Skyfires, and 2D6 Plaguebearers (up to 10). Those are the max of those models you'd need. The Kairic Acolytes, Putrid Blightkings, and Bloodreavers need no more than are in the Hammerhal box.

In a closer read of the behavior tables, I realized some rolls can generate even more adversaries: worst case is D6 more Acolytes or Bloodreavers for the Sorcerer (a full group could have already spawned), D3 Acolytes more for one of their warbands (or a Pink Horror & related subdivisions), D3 more Bloodreavers for one of their bands, and D3 Plaguebearers for one of theirs. There could be some BIG scraps underground, so level up fast!

[Lucio]

Well damnit, reading the extended enemies list has just added 4 new kits to my Wish List. My aim is to have every Hero and adversary in the end!

[MacDuff]

I too have been bitten by the same bug. I like to have everything possible, painted and in the box. But it will be a tight fit. :o)

[Guest]

On 3/2/2017 at 3:10 PM, richstrach said:

I love Silver Tower and it's very much a solo experience for me,

 

Solo? Is it possible to play Silver Tower alone?

[rokapoke]

9 minutes ago, Jamie the Jasper said:

 

Solo? Is it possible to play Silver Tower alone?

Absolutely. Pick the number of heroes you want to run and get to it. I've done it controlling as many as three heroes. Since the adversaries have their moves effectively generated from dice rolls, you don't have to worry much about any bias in your gameplay. 

[Guest]

Just now, rokapoke said:

Absolutely. Pick the number of heroes you want to run and get to it. I've done it controlling as many as three heroes. Since the adversaries have their moves effectively generated from dice rolls, you don't have to worry much about any bias in your gameplay. 

Hadn't even thought of that. That's really interesting. I guess it's a similar experience to a Fighting Fanstasy book or something like that.

[MacDuff]

Short of doing new Dungeon Master mods of SOH, I can think of two ways to play SOH solo. Both involve a trip to your stationary store.

1: Buy some big postits. Turn the GM book upside down. Cover the maps, except the stairs down, the first room and the portals, for each level. Cover all on the right page describing the rooms. Since it's upside down, this makes it tough to absorb much. Go thru all levels covering things, making it even harder to remember much. As you go thru rooms during play, adjust the postits (upside down) for room description, and uncover only the room you're in. Then read it, but randomize anything involving a specific board square or searching task, then use enemy AI. Decide on which exit you'll use, turn upside down, move postits to reveal the next room, jiggle postits to reveal its description, turn it right side up, and continue. Funky but it should work.

2. Buy some labels and cheap playing cards. Keep the jokers. SOH has 54 rooms, so write on the label a note with the room number and level name and stick one to each card. Mix with all ST cards if desired. Draw a card, and randomize its internal portal connections based on a compass orierntation, perhaps roll 3d6 to determine the number of portals, such as (assuming a south entry) 1=west portal, 2=no west portal, 3=north portal, 4=no north portal, 5=east portal, 6=no east portal. If you don't have 3d6 worth, roll again. Draw and place a tile based on each card drawn. Find book references and stock with defined enemies or traps, etc. as defined. You might want to add a random chance of gold in ST tiles since that's new. This doesn't give the SOH experience but lets you build random dungeons in the spirit of the old WQ system.

You can also recreate the old WQ random enemies system to make things more unpredictable. Then, make a 2d6 table for all the bad guys you got (the first dice=tens, second dice=numbers approach, to give from 11-66 options, and fill out the table with the dudes you have minis for and that have rules, including exotic adversaries. Roll 2D6 when you enter a random room, and have at it!

I am sure this could also be easily coded, but until then...

[Turragor]

I think solo play isn't the most impacted here. Having played ST solo and with a friend I can say that they are two very different experiences (solo being far inferior - which isn't strange given the social potential of these games).

I would argue that the greatest impact is when there are 2 regular pals playing. A single player against a GM is a very different mechanic from two ST adventurers. Not without fun mind you but if you're wanting to level characters you can see where arguments might pop up.

[warhead01]

Sad to hear that "solo" play will be more difficult. I liked the card draws for the randomness of the map in Silver Tower I was hopeful this would remain part of AoS WQ. Now I'm thinking about either new cards for charts to roll on. I'd like a set of charts for how the map is set out as well as what the opposition is and the rewards are.  I'm not much into roll playing but I can imagine a set of charts with difficulty ranging from low to high ect. 
 

[Captain Marius]

Who's played through the campaign then? Me and a mate finished this in three (long) sittings and are champing at the bit for more! Some quick observations:

- We used the Treasures way more than the naff ones in Silver Tower and they really had an impact. Still a few duffers there though.

- By the end it felt like rules bloat for my mate who was controlling the Hero and four Companions (Archimaine!). With four Skills, four Treasures and an Artefact each it was just too much. Maybe this does work better with multiple players as you wouldn't be just swapping the good stuff around for maximum benefit all the time?

- The campaign makes good use of the contents of the box, especially in the last three levels, but there was barely any opportunity for Exotic Adversaries (and we had ALL of the available ones to hand!) Not sure why they're only available for the first half of the campaign...

- Unexpected Events. Bit of a missed opportunity here as they rarely happened and we missed some flavourful things over the course of the campaign. Maybe if it was a D3 roll so each Event has an equal chance of happening, or make Unexpected Events more likely to happen, or have the special stuff trigger automatically at some point in the Dungeon (my god the Obstruction and Explosion were annoying). Mind you I did not miss those annoying Familiars from Silver Tower, not one bit!

- The Sorceror was a bit wet, I recall the Gaunt Summoner being a bit more threatening... but then he did get a lot more chances to attack!

- As GM I boosted the difficulty to Heroic (+1 Vigour for Adversaries and +1 to rolls on the Ambush table) once we got to Grinding Gears. I could have done with going to the next level for the Sorceror's Lair, but it's a fine line between making things tough enough for the Heroes that they know they've been in a fight, and letting them walkthrough without a scratch, which is ultimately boring for everyone. In the end the Heroes killed the Sorceror but lost Archimaine and the Fleetmaster in the process and had to pull all their Treasure tricks to keep the Loremaster alive and bring the Cogsmith back - the Castellant was a solid tank and really held the group together by blocking doorways and healing everyone with his lantern.

- The stuff in the city was fantastic the first time you try it but quickly became tedious once you were overloaded with Gold and Treasures. We ended up just doing Red Yugol's Revelrie for everyone on the last visit. The potential for development here is massive and it will be interesting to see if this can be added to without removing the core principles of the game i.e. no duplicate skills or treasures...

- The story felt both in-depth and slight at the same time. The novella was great and left me eager to read any and all future fiction set in Hammerhal, but having to speed-read this really postponed starting to play the actual game (downside of including only old models, we had them all already painted and ready to go!). The plot of the actual campaign was neat enough, but didn't really go into any detail. A bit more background on Redomir would have been useful.

- Quests. There were a couple of cool bits in the early Dungeons, namely the Prisoner in the Catacombs and the prize in the Ancient Halls, but there was not much more of this stuff later on. I would have liked some more interaction between stuff you achieve in the Dungeons and the activities you can undertake in the city.

- I've already written a bunch of mods which I think will solve some of the issues we had and work well within custom scenarios. I'm looking forward to designing one and trying them out!

[AmurayiWestgate]

The fact that there is no summary whatsoever to tell the GM what the actual plot is all about is super annoying.

Also the villain isn't introduced well at all.

You are being forced to read through the 30 or so pages prequel-story in the book.

[Circus of Paint]

4 hours ago, AmurayiWestgate said:

The fact that there is no summary whatsoever to tell the GM what the actual plot is all about is super annoying.

Also the villain isn't introduced well at all.

You are being forced to read through the 30 or so pages prequel-story in the book.

I only got around to reading the Cinderfall bits yesterday, but I thought they were really neat. The illustrations and maps helped too - it actually made me think Stormcast are more human than I realised.

[AmurayiWestgate]

We started to play yesterday. Everybody liked it so far. Better than Silvertower.