Terrain Log: Brown World Temple

Quick post today!

We've been finishing up a bangload of terrain this month, and I've not showcased some of the more recent pieces we've added to the collection.  Today I want to talk about Games Workshop's Arcane Ruins!  We got these painted and on the table several weeks ago, and they've been a really neat addition to our games.

Currently priced at $29.75 USD, the Arcane Ruins are available in GW's webstore.  We got these several months ago, but I'm a snail when it comes to completing projects.  Usually I have what seems like thirty projects going on at once, and they all seem to complete around the same time - six months later.  However, after I'd glued the columns and skull-face blocks together it sat around in it's box, for months.  That's when the vivacious Miss Foley found them and declared she was going to paint them for us.

After a quick examination of the paint job on the box, she painted in the club's Brown World scheme!  Behold the Ruinous Temple!  She did a great job on the layering and shading, even if my neglecting to Green Stuff those seams did leave a few of them visible.  That's my fault though - I should have noticed that but somehow it got away from me.  Working too fast on too many things, but hey, I'm working to narrow my focus.  Oh well, it's not so bad - and I didn't even have to work hard for it!

We didn't glue the pillars to the base, so each piece can actually be used on it's own.  The arches are great across roads and other conspicuous places to place arches, and the individual pieces make great scatter terrain.  So the whole thing comes apart and has already been used liberally to help create some interesting battlefields.

Definitely recommended for your battlefields. Remember we are starting AD&D this week at 3 p.m., so make sure to get there early to get in on some interesting conversation and exciting, riveting, action-packed dungeon delving!

The Last Charge of the Ralpar

The elemental towered over them all.  After the charge hit it, the thing barely moved.  One of the Stubbs looked incredulously at his powerful magic blade - it barely managed a scratch.  They all knew they were in trouble, as the mighty half orc reeled from a backhanded strike from the massive creature.

Ruros Ralpar sounded the retreat, but his cry was cut short by a terrible pummeling from the earth elemental's mighty fists.  He dropped like a wet sack, and the others had seen enough.  As much of the party fled through the purple curtains to the north passage, Ganth Ralpar moved to retrieve his brother's body from the darkness of the temple.

As he gripped the slack form of Ruros, Ganth looked up in time to see the elemental reach down to crush the life from him.  It was very quick.

Yet no one else saw this.  The remaining members of the party fled to Hommlett, where they make a painful re-evaluation of their situation...

---

This upcoming weekend, we're going to have to re-evaluate the motivations of the remaining characters in the campaign.  As time has worn on, and replacements have trickled in, the player party finds itself lacking a good motivation to enter the Temple.  In sync with their characters, the players have pretty much decided that dissolving this party and creating an entirely new set of characters will be the best answer.

In doing so, they will create a commonality of cause that unites them and makes way for new characters coming into the game.  There's been a lot of discussion about this, and there are alternatives...but it comes down to the following.

We have decided to play these games, in their published form, with their published rulesets.  This has been a tacit agreement from the beginning, otherwise I would have just started a "Free Range Greyhawk" campaign like we used to do back in the 1990's.  We're not blending rulesets or making up houserules, the nature of this endeavor is to play the rulesets as they are written.  The purpose for that is so we can see, in painful detail, the complete evolution of the published Dungeons & Dragons works throughout the years.

So, it's not your typical campaign.

Since that's defeating the purpose of our experiment (which I have spoken about many times before), we have pretty much decided that the evil characters in the party will seek greener pastures, since there's no evidence of any sort of incentive in the Temple.  The players themselves struggle to come up with a reason to keep adventuring in Hommlett.  In this manner, they have effectively roleplayed these characters out of the game.

Now, some GM's would just allow them to keep their characters and either handwave motivations away and simply not worry about it.  Some GM's would let the characters wander off and then follow those new adventures.  I would probably do one of those as well, whichever the players preferred, if that were in the scope of the campaign.

In this campaign, when your character loses motivation...that character will leave the area, retiring to the purview of the DM.  You can make a new character with new motivation.

There's been a high death toll.  For the current players, the morale effect has been to demoralize their characters in their endeavor to explore and defeat the Temple's power.  The players themselves are not demoralized, much to the contrary.  I can see how this could form a paradox for some folks reading it, but I assure you I am in no danger of being relieved of Dungeon Master detail for quite some time.

This upcoming Sunday when we convene, I will hold a sort of "hearing" among the surviving player characters.  There has already been much discussion of this up to this point, so I'm going to boil it down to this:

You, as a player, must give me one GOOD reason why your character will continue on this mission.  

If the majority of the survivors cannot, the party will be dissolved and new characters will be created.  A new jumping off point has already been decided.

To any of you who think I'm being too heavy handed, remember that this has been coming for a long time and all the players know it.  The players are not disgruntled...far from it in fact.  They are clamoring for more!  Yet, this is one of those cases of being roleplayed right out of the scenario.

I know we're all looking forward to this next session, so remember - this week we start Advanced Dungeons & Dragons at 3 p.m. sharp.  Be there for the hearing or you won't be heard!

See you on Game Day!

Rulebook Ruminations: 6th Edition Marine Codeci

Well, we've been in 6th Edition for about 7 months now.  We've only had our head in the actual game for about a month now with the campaign grinding on, but today I want to talk about the two newest Warhammer 40,000 codeci:  the "flagship" marines for 6th Edition!

Almost every release, we get Chaos Space Marines near the front end of the release schedule.  If it's not the first one to be released, a Space Marine codex is.  Obviously, that's because these are flagships for the brand:  that is, they move the most units.  We can reasonably expect this trend to continue in the future, perhaps with a little variation.  Maybe orks will be the first enemy, maybe tyranids...but most of the time we're gonna get Chaos and Space Marines in some form or flavor.  What makes this release special is that they've chosen Dark Angels to be the flagship for 6th Edition instead of Ultramarines and the Codex Chapters.

Of course the books are awesome items.  I have some issues with certain units but honestly I don't feel that they are too overpowered...except they need to quit tweaking the Obliterator weapons and quit upgrading their firepower every edition.  No longer do they spit lascannons and twin linked heavy bolters...because they have plasma cannons and assault cannons instead, which are much better anyway.

The codeci include awesome new flyer models, and I'll be launching my own flyers soon.  This is a new trend this edition, but you can bet every army that gets the hardbound treatment will have nasty flyers and some sort of new large special unit model or kits, which is always the case.  Yet this edition the trend is for larger kits, like the Deathwing Command Squad that also contains the pieces for Deathwing Knights, or the Maulerfiend/Forgefiend kit that's simply just a lot of bits no matter how you put it together.

Troops and organizational logistics for each army has changed a little bit, but the new format looks great and I'm looking forward to seeing the other armies get the same treatment.  I've gushed about the awesomeness of having these items in hardcover before, but now that they've started Warhammer 40,000 on this I really can't get enough.  The books are just awesome, full color and well laid out.

The only thing I can really complain about isn't really a complaint:  they need to watch those fold outs in the back.  It seems that will be very easy to get creased or ripped, and I'm not sure how it's supposed to be functional when the rest of the book is a very solid reference manual.  The fold outs are awkward and flimsy (being 1 page thick) and I really think these should be the last ones published with those.

Either way, the books are great and I'm looking forward to the next great release from Games Workshop.