Thursday, June 4, 2015

Void Gothic I

First of All
There is a mini-con I am hosting 2 games at called Gamefest
It should be really cool. One game I am running is assassination force. It is basically a Mansions of Madness style 40k game. Room discovery, events, bad guys.

I am also running a new hybrid RPG I am calling "The Void Gothic"



Wall of text description follows

The flavour
In the far distant future, mankind reached the stars, reveled for 10 millennia, and stalled, stagnant in the limitless void. Magik and arcane practices has replaced science. Politics is a tinderbox fueling pointless wars of attrition, that then grind on between factions for centuries as the lives of millions are lost.
And amongst the outer reaches of the galaxy, beyond the light of the Astronomican, dark forces immeasurable by humanity, stir. Cimmerian gods stalk between the Halo stars, thirsty and laughing.  


The why
This is an attempt to bring the Warhammer 40k universe back from big brightly colored guns and powered armour shoulder pads to it’s roots- Star vampires, gothic imagery of John Blanche, the deep emptiness of space, warfare with a steampunk, space travel with runic flight manuals, aliens that invoke horror, not explode with a splutch by the hundred. Alien not Aliens. HP Lovecraft in space not Starship Troopers (the movie).


I have run several campaigns set in the 40k universe and feel the best combination is
  1. the “Paranoia” inspired impetus of the Inquisition,
  2. the suspense of good horror movies and
  3. the truly massive scale of the 40k fiction, especially Battlefleet gothic, which draws on Dune and other dimensions (warping space) to travel faster than light, rather than just hand waving and forgetting about the distances and physics.    


Requirements
Roleplaying pants- other than that, none- although if you own star-wars dice you are welcome to bring them.
Each character will get plenty of detail. If you don’t know what an Electro-Priest is or a Drill Abbot or a Necromunda hive ganger, don’t worry it’s all in the character description. In fact, not knowing works well- characters in the 40k universe/canon often know every little outside their lot in life. And those with depth in 40k lore may jump to some bad conclusions about adversaries, because what happens on the 40k tabletop and what happens in the roleplay environment  are very different. The roleplay milieu is investigation, social interaction, exploration, exploitation, factions within factions, profit, risk, betrayal..  


Mechanics
For those that are interested- and as this is not particularly combat heavy it probably won’t matter a great deal- the system is “Starwars Age of Rebellion” rules at it’s core. Roll dice, get threat, fail, success, advantage in various combinations. Roleplay the results - if you cause threat or advantage you decide what narrative effect that has- the bad guy slipped on the stairs, your brazier you clubbed him with has created a pall of smoke around you making it hard to see you etc. So it’s a chance +skill based narrative game. The people, skills stats are from dark heresy, but surprisingly they mesh really easily into the AoR scale. Same same. Unknown Armies is helping by replacing the Corruption and Insanity rules which were pretty flat. And damage is based on Kult- so weapons do scratches, wounds etc in a cumulative pyramid until you go splat. Pretty abstract and again, meshes well with the dice results system. And tracked by filling in boxes on your character sheet. No number crunching required, no chart to look up.


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