Rippers: Chapter 4

Since everyone's on holidays at the moment, we got together for an extended Rippers session. It ended up going for eight hours, with about a one hour break for dinner; the Actual Play is fairly long because it's effectively two sessions' worth of stuff, and we spent a good deal of time discussing and executing plans and conducting investigations so big combat scenes didn't really feature this time around.

• +Annette plays Gregory Pratchett, an alienist with a gift for physically battling the forces of darkness. His encounter with a werewolf led to the Rippers showing an interest in his talents.
• +Michael plays William Baker, a Professor of Archaeology who uses knowledge as a weapon. On his expeditions across Europe he began uncovering signs of the occult. In Eastern Europe, one of his parties was all but wiped out by a vampire. He was kicked out of Cambridge for publicly airing his views on the supernatural, losing his tenure and his marriage. The Rippers recruited him shortly afterwards.
• James plays Douglas, a mysterious cloaked gadgeteer with a modified crossbow.

Last time, Pratchett and Baker were unable to prevent the theft of a canopic jar from an exhibit at the British Museum. Baker was certain that it contained the heart of a rare Mesopotamian mummy.


Baker and Pratchett debrief their superiors at Ripper HQ, and also reunite with Douglas. They return to the scene of the crime and try to track the thief, but find only a small black cat statue. Baker uses his shady contacts to learn it's the calling card of the cat burglar known as Black Cat.

On Douglas' suggestion, they set up a "job" for Black Cat to steal an Egyptian cat statue from the Rippers Lodge. It's early morning, so they have to wait until that night to spring the trap and question him about the whereabouts of the stolen canopic jar.

On his way home to sleep, Pratchett is set upon by two assassins with swords who scream "Die in the name of Imhotep!" Surprised, overwhelmed, and badly injured, Pratchett makes it inside his office and bolts the door; the assassins are forced to flee as people begin to emerge onto the street. Pratchett returns to Rippers HQ by hansom cab to seek medical attention, and everyone sleeps at the Lodge until evening.

Late that night the Rippers lure Black Cat into a secure room and capture the burglar after a brief skirmish. Unmasked, they discover that Black Cat is a woman! Upon questioning her, they learn that the stolen canopic jar has been delivered to Lord Julian Maybrick, an occasional Rippers sponsor, friend of Johann Van Helsing, and collector of Egyptian artefacts (and the man whose party the PCs crashed in the Prologue). Black Cat only agreed to tell them this because they promised not to reveal their source, and Pratchett agreed to pay the rest of her fee for the fake job and let her go.

Led by Van Helsing, the group calls upon Maybrick's town house only to discover he has departed for his country estate earlier that evening.

Having missed the last train, Pratchett, Baker and Douglas travel to Maybrick's estate via carriage, arriving in the morning. Pratchett and Baker meet Maybrick and suggest he may be in possession of the jar, perhaps to protect it. He takes umbrage and orders them to leave. Meanwhile Douglas strolls in the back of the house, but doesn't find anything before being accosted by servants and escorted off the property.

Douglas jumps the wall and the group meets up again. The groundskeeper releases his dogs, and the Rippers climb a tree. Pratchett reveals his ability to empathise and communicate with dogs, and persuades them to leave - although the group remains in the tree to avoid the groundskeeper.

Some time in the afternoon, they see a carriage arrive with several lackeys and one gentleman in a top hat. The new arrivals are met at the front door by Maybrick and his butler, and are escorted inside. One of the lackeys drives the carriage around to the back of the house.

They climb down and circle around the mansion, but run into some of the dogs and the groundsman. They try to persuade him they are supposed to be there, but he tries to escort them to the main house "for their own safety." Douglas shoots him in the back, and is badly mauled by the dogs until Pratchett manages to call them off again.

They drag the unconscious groundsman towards the carriage. Pratchett recognises the lackey guarding it as one of the assassins from yesterday morning. He steps out and stabs the man before the thug can draw his weapon. They try to stuff the body into the carriage's trunk, but discover it's already occupied by two active Mummies. They slay one, and set fire to the carriage which burns the second one. As the fire takes off, they retreat into the cover of the garden.


To prepare for this session, I spent maybe an hour or two writing notes and mulling over the existing situation. With several elements already in play, I drew a relationship map showing who was doing what with whom. I then came up with a couple of timelines - lists of sequential events that would happen if the NPCs' plans went ahead unopposed. Once the PCs start to interfere, I just need to adjust the plans and maybe rework the timelines to reflect the changed circumstances.

All of my prep for this seven hour session (and probably for the next session as well) fit on one piece of paper, although I also used another sheet with some NPC and monster stats. Here's a scan, although I've obscured the details since I don't want to reveal some of the connections to my players yet!

Relationship diagrams help me get a better feel for how things look from various points of view. A lot of this planning style is influenced by Apocalypse World which uses Fronts (sources of trouble) and Countdown Clocks (essentially, a list of what will happen if nobody interferes). Speaking of which, I have a three-player Apocalypse World game lined up later in the week with two of my three Rippers and one of the Pathfinder guys.

>>> To be continued...

Pathfinder: Session 2

Since it's holiday time, we've been getting in a few more sessions than usual. After an eight hour Rippers marathon the day before, we got together for four or five hours of Pathfinder.

• +Annette plays Aliella Glorygem, a Dwarven Wizard (Evoker).
• James plays Elerith, an Elven Cleric of Desna and the only Good-aligned member of the group (everyone else is some form of Neutral).
• Maddi plays Constance, an Elven Rogue.
• Sasha plays Asmira Mothwing, a Human Fighter with scale armour, a shield, a rapier, and a massive Dex bonus.
• I play Durga the Thunderbolt, a Human Barbarian with a two-handed sword and studded leather armour for swift movement.

Previously, we entered a network of caves and fought many goblins, while searching for the mysterious creature known only as Black Fang.


We awoke refreshed and advanced on Black Fang's lair. After climbing up a ledge, we fought and defeated four foul animated skeletons. Pressing on, we entered a large cavern with a hole in the roof. Asmira and I pushed forward. Rounding a wall of rock, I spied a pile of treasure - and at that moment, a small Black Dragon descended through the hole to land upon it!

Before I could react, it had shot its acid breath at me and charged to attack! I drew the Dragonbane longsword and fought back as the others joined the fray. While it took its toll with tooth and claw, our blades and magic were more than its equal. After a mighty blow from my Dragonbane and a grievous thrust from Constance's rapier, the beast took to the skies and fled.

We returned to town to resupply, planning to head back and stake out the lair in case Black Fang returned. However, the mayor was satisfied that the beast was driven off and we received our reward.


After completing our first "dungeon" the GM informed us that, since our group had worked together so well, we decided to form an adventuring company and offer our services for hire. However, it was a few weeks before we were approached with a task.

I did raise an eyebrow when we were told what our characters were doing, but I am cutting the GM some slack as he's running a module-based introduction that will lead into a full campaign. At the moment the focus of the game is on the dungeons, so the GM exercising editorial control to make sure we get to the right place is understandable. At least telling us how things need to be is preferable to giving us the illusion of choice and then blocking our moves until we end up where he wants us anyway. I'm hopeful that we'll be able to make more meaningful decisions about campaign direction once the game proper begins.


A few weeks after dealing with Black Fang, the mayor approached us with a job. A pair of Dwarves had asked for the rights to an abandoned mine near Sandpoint. The town agreed, but the Dwarves had not been heard from since. We were to find out if they had run into trouble or if they were mining gold without paying their dues to the town.

The mine tunnel led to a crossroad. There were signs of a fight with giant spiders. Tracks had gone West and North and returned, but had then gone East and not returned. Aliella cast an Alarm spell upon the crossroad, and we headed off to explore each tunnel in turn.

To the West was a 15-foot deep sink-hole with a chest on the far side. Constance leapt across and recovered some treasure, but hurt herself trying to leap back.

To the North was a cave-in and signs of webs. We were attacked by two man-sized spiders, but eventually slew them and found a small amount of treasure.

To the East we found an injured Dwarf. He said that he and his brother had been attacked by a rock monster, and implored us to find his missing kin. We found him a short way along the tunnel, but as Asmira advanced to fetch him an Earth Elemental burst out of the rubble and attacked us! Elerith evacuated the Dwarf as battle was met, and we destroyed the fiend after a gruelling battle. Fortunately, none of our number fell in combat.

We escorted the Dwarves back to town and collected our well-earned reward.



The game was enjoyable; once more, the focus was on exploring and overcoming the challenges presented in the dungeon environment, and barely any play has taken place back in town or even in the wilderness. The modular dungeons have offered a variety of problems to deal with, so there's generally something for everyone to get involved with.

After two dungeons, we're two-thirds of the way to second level. It's starting to seem like a bit of a hike, since I'm straining to get my Attack Bonus higher and hit more often. Like many games, Pathfinder tends to have many rolls where effectively nothing happens - missed attacks, failed checks that don't progress the situation. I gave the group an overview of Apocalypse World where every roll has a consequence apart from lost time, and I'm hoping to run a game of that for them some time soonish.

Speaking of XP, there was one situation that irked me a little, although it's nothing major and certainly didn't spoil the game. The GM was showing off his nifty experience point spreadsheet, and happened to mention that we'd missed out on some bonus experience in Black Fang's lair because we hadn't accepted the quest from the goblin chief to retrieve his toy dragon. He said he wanted to reward us for negotiating rather than fighting the goblins. He wanted to encourage us to make the "right" choice, but since we were unaware of the incentive it was pretty ineffective.

The overwhelming majority of the party is Neutral or Chaotic Neutral, we have a Dwarf who has a racial hatred of goblinoids, and my character was leery about leaving the goblin threat behind us. Negotiating and honouring an agreement with the goblins is a Lawful and possibly Good act, so we went unrewarded for playing to our alignments. The only Lawful Good member of the party did try to get us to negotiate, but she was outvoted.

Personally I think it would be better if expectations and rewards were discussed ahead of time so everyone knows where they stand. These days I prefer to discuss the way a particular game will run before I actually start running it. At the moment with Pathfinder it's just the one minor thing, but I thought it was worth discussing because I'd rather not see it become a trend.

In any case, I'm enjoying the game and looking forward to next session.

>>> To be continued...

Ghouls for Savage Worlds

Reading through the Rippers bestiary, I was disappointed to find no Ghouls - so I made my own.

Since reading up a little on Persian mythology many years ago, I've always been quite partial to the Arabic ghul - not an undead, but an inhuman creature that feeds on the dead; that cannot starve to death but becomes increasingly emaciated; that has broad soft feet that don't leave footprints on sand; that can imitate a human; and that can turn invisible when standing still.

My Ghouls come in three versions - Sated, Hungry, and Starving. Sated Ghouls are tougher, but the hungrier they get the faster and more vicious they become. They excel as ambush predators, often waiting underground or simply invisible in plain sight until their prey moves within reach.

Ghoul

Split attributes are for Sated/Hungry/Starving Ghouls.

Attributes: Agility d6/d8/d10, Smarts d6, Spirit d8, Strength d10, Vigor d8
Skills: Fighting d6/d8/d10, Stealth d10+2, Notice d8/d8+1/d8+2
Parry 5/6/7, Toughness 8/7/6, Pace 6+d6/8+d6/10+d8

Special Abilities

• Burrowing (4): Able to dig rapidly through dirt, sand, mud, and clay. Ambush (Stealth vs Notice) for +2 Attack and Damage (+4 on a Raise).
• Darksight: No vision penalty from darkness.
• Fade: In a turn where it takes no actions (including reactive or free actions), the Ghoul can choose to turn invisible, fading into the surrounding scenery. -4 to Notice and subsequent attacks - but if attacked the Ghoul must move to defend itself and therefore becomes immediately visible.
• False Visage: The Ghoul can pull its face into the semblance of a human face, and imitate a human gait, but it will not stand up to close inspection; Notice at +2 will reveal its inhuman nature.
• Grasping Teeth: Str+d6 Damage.
• Rubbery Hide: Armour +2/+1/0 (calculated into Toughness).
• Sand Feet: Stealth +2. No Pace penalty on soft sand, thick mud, or snow.

Rippers: Chapters 1 to 3

We held a second Rippers session in November or December, and managed to fit in another couple of sessions around the New Year period. James turned up for session two (Chapter 1), but unfortunately couldn't make it to either of the subsequent games. Undaunted, Pratchett and Baker pressed on against the forces of darkness.

• +Annette plays Gregory Pratchett, an alienist with a gift for physically battling the forces of darkness. His encounter with a werewolf led to the Rippers showing an interest in his talents.
• +Michael plays William Baker, a Professor of Archaeology who uses knowledge as a weapon. On his expeditions across Europe he began uncovering signs of the occult. In Eastern Europe, one of his parties was all but wiped out by a vampire. He was kicked out of Cambridge for publicly airing his views on the supernatural, losing his tenure and his marriage. The Rippers recruited him shortly afterwards.
• James plays Douglas, a mysterious cloaked gadgeteer with a modified crossbow.

Chapter 1

Pratchett and Baker were placed under the administration of the bureaucratic Tristifer Shackleworth, and teamed up with the mysterious Douglas. Given the option of searching for the missing mummy-filled crates from Canary Wharf or checking out reports of grave-robbing at a small church in Southwark, they chose the church. They determined that something had been burrowing into the graves, which had subsequently collapsed. Entering the catacombs below the church, they discovered a nest of Ghouls! While fighting them off, Baker was severely injured. The group was forced to retreat before completing a thorough search, and the elderly Father Robertson agreed to keep the catacombs firmly shut just in case.

Chapter 2

Two weeks later, Baker was fully recovered. He and Pratchett were assigned to help guard the British Museum the following evening. The Rippers were providing additional security to an exhibit of Mesopotamian grave artefacts, posing as Scotland Yard detectives. Until then, the pair had free reign to undertake their own investigations. Douglas was in the middle of another assignment and would not be joining them.

Father Robertson visited Pratchett and reported that he had heard noises from the crypts. The pair go back to Southwark and slay a final Ghoul that had sated its hunger on the bodies of its fallen comrades. Unfortunately, one of the Ripper irregulars they brought as backup falls in combat.

After returning to the city, the pair investigate the missing Mummy-laden crates from Canary Wharf. The crates came in on the Azimuth, a cargo ship registered to Leek Imports, owned by industrialist Conrad Leek. They deduce the likely location of the Mummy crates and raid a warehouse the following morning. It's empty save for the remnants of some crates, and four unopened ones that contain activated Mummies. They slew two in their boxes before the other pair burst out. The Mummies are defeated, but one of the Ripper irregulars falls in combat.

Chapter 3

After finishing off the Mummies, the group were forced to flee as the police approached.

That night, the pair help guard the unusual Mesopotamian burial exhibition at the British Museum, under the direction of senior Ripper John Stebbins. The exhibit was an unusual form of mummification, with obvious Egyptian influences. A gang of Mummies attacked one of the rear entrances, and it took the combined force of seven Rippers and a game security guard to stop their advance.

Alas, the assault had drawn their attention away from the exhibition room. As they returned, they witnessed a cat burglar climbing a rope to the skylight, with one of the canopic jars! Their attempts to foil the burglar's escape were in vain.


I really started to feel the swinginess of Savage Worlds combat in these games - a lot of misses followed by one explosive, decisive hit. The extra-resilient Mummies (even Servitors have a high Parry and exceptional Toughness) probably don't help, so I will be sure to introduce more enemy variety in the ensuing sessions. I do feel for Professor Baker, as he's not really much chop in a fight.

We have another session scheduled in the next couple of days. I still need to sit down and work out some more factional details and potential looming threats, but I've been going over things in my head so it should just be a matter of making some notes and pulling the threads to see what happens.

>>> Chapter 4

Pathfinder: Session 1

+Michael's started a game of Pathfinder using the Beginner's Box, so I'm a player in this one!

Not having played Pathfinder before, I'd gathered that it was an offshoot of D&D 3.5, and a lot of people on the forums I frequent find it to be overly fiddly, mechanically speaking. I played a few sessions of 3.5 a while back, and after much exposure to AD&D 2nd Edition in the 90's I actually really liked a lot of the changes they made - especially reversing AC/THAC0. However, I can totally see where it could become "too much" with all the manoeuvres, feats, and modifiers to keep track of.

I'm starting to feel a bit "over" dungeon fantasy as a gaming genre, but was willing to give it a go. In my AD&D days, the simplicity of the Fighter had always appealed to me, so I started thinking about a two-handed sword warrior.

I must say, the Beginner's Box really does an excellent job of guiding you through character creation and presenting your options clearly without being overwhelming. The layout and icons used throughout the book really help in this regard. 

So I was going through the Hero's Handbook, looking at options for my planned greatsword-wielding Amazon - and then I opened the Player's Pack expansion and fell in love with the Barbarian class. I've always disliked D&D's tendency to make everyone move at the same speed, so the extra Movement really appealed. I also liked the idea of a warrior tapping into their primal rage to cause carnage and destruction. It really fit with the image I was developing for my character. Thus was born Durga the Thunderbolt.

We're using the free version of Hero Lab to keep track of characters for this game. It certainly helps make the modifiers and fiddly parts of the rules more manageable.

With a bit of a recruitment push, we ended up with five players plus GM.

• +Annette plays Aliella Glorygem, a Dwarven Wizard (Evoker).
• James plays Elerith, an Elven Cleric of Desna and the only Good-aligned member of the group (everyone else is some form of Neutral).
• Maddi plays Constance, an Elven Rogue.
• Sasha (absent) plays Asmira Mothwing, a Human Fighter with scale armour, a shield, a rapier, and a massive Dex bonus.
• I play Durga the Thunderbolt, a Human Barbarian with a two-handed sword and studded leather armour for swift movement.

The party began at the mouth of some caves, rumoured to be the lair of a beast known only as Black Fang. It had been attacking livestock near the coastal town of Sandpoint, so the group had accepted a request to seek out and destroy the menace. All of the characters save myself were locals; I had wandered in from the wilderness and taken this opportunity to prove my bravery and seek treasures.

We were attacked by goblins at the cave mouth, who proved no match for us. We entered and came upon a group of goblins arguing with their leader. We negotiated with them and managed to gain information about Black Fang's weaknesses, but refused to accept the leader's quest to return a toy dragon to him. Negotiations broke down and we slew them all in battle.

We avoided Black Fang's lair for the moment, choosing to explore the other chambers first. I swam across a deep pool to an island  where treasure lay, and was attacked by a Reefclaw. The treasure included a Dragonbane Longsword, which I claimed for the battle ahead, as it seemed Black Fang may be some form of draconic creature.

We discovered a goblin and a giant spider dead near each other; the goblin held the toy black dragon that the goblin leader had wanted us to retrieve.

The final room housed a glowing red ruby flanked by statues. After much caution, we approached and the statues announced "Approach with humility and live; approach with pride and die!" After much cautious debate, I crawled towards the altar. A fan of flame shot from each statue over my head, but there was enough room to claim the gem - which stopped the flames.

We withdrew to the entrance chamber to camp and prepare for battle against Black Fang.

Michael did a good job of GMing his first session ever, adapting well to our decisions and presenting the dungeon in a neutral manner - he wasn't out to get us, nor was he there to help us. 

My only disappointment was that our characters all started the game without knowing each other, save a brief introduction on the road to the caves. I would have liked to establish connections to some of the other characters, giving me some extra motivation besides the mercenary promise of treasure. I thought it a little odd, anyway, given the characters were all supposed to be from a town of 1200 residents, that nobody knew anybody else at all.

However, the lack of connections didn't impact the actual play of dungeon delving, and we began to develop the beginnings of relationships naturally as the game progressed. I was able to express my primal nature and take on my role in the party as highly mobile heavy hitter, a front-line fighter with my eye ever on the next doorway while the others searched and looted.

All up I enjoyed the game, and I'm looking forward to Session 2! I am, however, also eager for this group - many of whom are novices - to experience some of the other flavours of RPGs. In particular, I'd love to run a game that wasn't focussed on maps and minis like our Savage Worlds, D&D Next, and Pathfinder games have been. I'm keen to try something like Apocalypse World, Ryuutama, or Tenra Bansho Zero with them, and Annette's also expressed a desire to run a Firefly game using the shiny new Cortex Plus edition - which would also meet my mini-less criteria and let me play as well!

>>> To be continued!

Building System Familiarity

As I discussed in the Rippers: Prologue post, some game systems have hurdles for new players based on familiarity with the system, and in particular with areas where the player needs to be familiar with a large array of options before they can make informed choices during character creation.

In Fate 3, this was Stunts. In D&D 3.X, it's Feats. In Savage Worlds, it's Edges. For PowerFrame, it's Abilities.

Without a thorough understanding of these areas, players risk making poor choices - either creating mechanically sub-optimal characters, or simply ending up with a character whose capabilities don't match the player's expectations. The hurdle lies in the time and effort required to read through all (or most) of the options, and in knowing the system well enough to be able to judge what is worthwhile and what is less important.

PowerFrame has a list of roughly 50  Abilities, which cover everything from Strength to Politics. There is no divide between "stats" and "skills". The hurdle here, therefore, is knowing which Abilities are mechanically useful versus those that are more for flavour, which ones have core utility and which are required for specialised fields, and which ones you need in order to make your character the way you envision them.

I recently cracked open the PowerFrame document to start work again, and finished off a page I'd been working on last year - Getting to Know the Abilities. It's a summary that goes through and points out the most useful and most frequently used Abilities, and which also provides a brief overview of some specialist areas such as movement, deception, and mysticism. I'm hoping this will be useful to new players trying to get over that initial hurdle.

Missing Time

Sorry for the hiatus - I spent the latter part of 2013 packing and cleaning my flat so I could move cities and start living with my fiancée. Now I'm all moved in (although not quite all unpacked), and I'm slowly adjusting to my new life and a different schedule. At the moment I'm a homemaker while my partner's working full-time, and I'm still adjusting to doing housework and garden maintenance all the time. Hopefully there'll be some freelance graphics work on the horizon, although I'd love to get paid to proofread RPGs! Once I get more into the swing of things, I hope to be able to set aside some decent chunks of time for various game and craft projects.

This year I think I'd like to shift the focus of this blog away from detailed (and time-consuming) Actual Plays, towards summaries of the sessions' events and more discussion about how we played the game - where I thought the game system helped or hindered, or discussions of techniques. I started this somewhat with the Rippers: Prologue with a lengthy discussion of character creation, but I then followed it up with a complete AP. I think I'll also stop back-dating APs to when we played the session, and instead just post them when I get them done.

With my change of lifestyle, I'm hoping to push on and finish my PowerFrame RPG this year, so I'm looking forward to blogging about my progress and thoughts on that system in general. Once that's done, or as the mood strikes me, I'll probably pick up some older projects and see if I can finish those off too - or I might just start something completely different!

I'm looking forward to a fresh and diverse 2014 with new gamers in a new city. Thanks for reading last year, and for your ongoing patronage!