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Mcguffins and quests and contacts, oh my! While most Adventurers like to think of themselves as “heroes”, being an Adventurer is lot more like business than chivalry. Adventurers are in the business of going on adventurers so that they can acquire heaps of gold, dance on the bones of trolls, and generally have some legitimate excuse for walking around town bristling with magic wands and singing swords. During a TOWN phase, the party needs to acquire QUESTS to go on (which may remind you of how role-playing is handled on a lot of electronic computing machine virtual worlds, that we will not mention). There are 2 primary ways of gaining QUESTS – finding a posted Quest, or getting a Quest from a Contact. Posted Quests are created by the dM prior to play and represent general work for Adventurers and their ilk. Contacts are player-generated quests that work just like posted quests but help the Party move their own personal story along. An Adventurer can only ever have 1 QUEST at a time. Once they pick up a quest (from a contact or a post) they are stuck with it, until the Party selects their quest for an adventure. Once the party has gathered in the bar (or tavern, or malt-shop, or wherever it is that you gather), you all need to agree on (or more accurately, argue about and then settle for) which QUEST you want to tackle next from your parties available quests. POSTED QUESTS Adventurers can find posted Quests at THE BAR, THE GUILD, and occasionally at a SHOP or TEMPLE. Each of these places has a Tack Board* where people can post QUESTS that they need to have completed. Adventurers can read the Title (all Adventures have Titles) and the brief description of the Adventure, and see what the reward for completing that Adventure is. A dM needs to have a few posted Quests ready for play when the Party starts – since you never know what they are going to select. At this point, we need to digress and rant for a paragraph or two. As lifelong Game Masters, if there is one truth that we have discovered is that the best laid adventures of mice and men are always thwarted by the desires of the party. Far too many Game Masters have poured their hearts and souls into carefully mapping, charting, and stating impressive dungeons and treasure rooms – only to have the party decide (usually at the last minute) that they “really don’t feel like tracking the Ogre King back to his Lair, why don’t we ride out to that cool sounding mountain range that the Game Master doesn’t even have drawn on his hex map…” Way too many times, have we seen a GM brought low by these chaotic whims and wild goose chases. We promise that’s never going to happen to you in Warhamster. *Not an ATTACK BOARD, which is a 5 th Level Cork Elemental bristling with multi-colored quills and powerful dry-erase spells. CONTACT QUESTS When an Adventurer is in TOWN, they can spend their STORY to “find a contact”. When they do this, they have to name the contact and select what kind of McGuffin that contact rewards. Contact’s usually have a simple and easy to remember name (like Barney the Bartender or Quisilnoph the Question Maker or Firstname The Profession*). A contact can be anyone (or sometime anything), and except for giving Quests will offer no other assistance to the character (we did call them contacts, not buddies). Once an Adventurer has established a Contact, they can visit that Contact again to get additional quests. Usually, these quests will have at least a semblance of continuity – though it isn’t required. Quests obtained from Contacts are created by the player making the contact. You do this, by using the Warhamster Murderous Adventure Design Library (usually shortened to Warhamster M.A.D.LIBrary for space reasons***). As a player, you get to answer a few short questions about the setting and purpose of the QUEST, and then the dM gets to fill it with monsters, traps, and you get the picture! * Strangely to the Milnor Gnomelings of Aurora, Firstname the Profession is the name of a legendary Gnomish warrior-chieftain who was the wielder of the mighty Goggles of Obviousness, and the legendary Hammer of Generic Doom**. ** Generic was the capital city of the ancient Gnomish Milor Empire. *** And in no way infringing on the copyright or trademarks owned by the totally awesome Penguin Group.
The murderous adventure design library M.A.D.LIBrary 1) Who is the Big Bad? 2) Which Monster Family are we going to have to kill? ( ‘Oids, ‘Dead, Beasties, Darklings, or Weird) 3) What is the McGuffin? 4) What Flavor is that McGuffin? (Might, Arcana, Wealth, Glory, or Rosebud!) 5) Why is there Conflict? (What brings the villains and the Party into conflict over the McGuffin) 6) Where’s the Opening Scene? 7) When is the Climactic Battle? 8) How Dangerous is this Adventure? Dangerous (+0), More Dangerous (+1), Really Dangerous (+2), Nuts! (+3) 9) What is the Title of the Adventure Module? Who is the Big Bad? Not to steal a Whedonism…well, actually to steal a Whedonism, since this has become the preferred nomenclature for primary villain in a post-Buffy universe. Who is the Big Bad. Don’t worry about stats, just give a name a general description of the primary villain. It could be a poncho wearing, Mariachi guitar playing, mustachioed Hill Giant named Poncho Colina Gigante. It could be a Vampiric Ham Sandwich. It could be a Rock (though not Iraq – let’s not make this game political). Which Monster Family are we going to have to kill? For now* there are 5 basic Monsters Families (all part of a well-balanced Adventure Diet): Beasties, ‘Dead, ‘Oids, Darklings, and Weird. Again, don’t worry about stats right now – just pick the flavor of beasts that you want the players to fill full of arrows, magic missiles, swords, and kung fu beats. Full info on Monster stats is given in the Monster Menu section. Beasties covers animals, animal like monsters, dinosaurs, and mythological wonders. ‘Oids is short for “goblinoids” and covers the “green-skinned” anti- Adventurer races like goblins, orks, trolls, bugbears, ogres, giants, et al. The ‘Dead covers all of the various undead – from ghosts to vampires, skeletons to zombies, with a side trip into classic movie monster tropes like Frankensteins, Lagoon Monsters, Lycanthropes, and Mummies. Darklings are the “mirror mirror” underground dwelling versions of your fantasy standbys – with Drowlings (evil Elves), Gnumenlings (evil Gnomes), Dwurflings (evil Dwarves), Thirdlings (evil Halflings), Fifthlings (evil Quarterlings), and Ratlings (evil Hamsterlings). The Weird family covers just about everything else, as miscellaneous is always the largest category. In fact, we’re pretty sure that the Weird Family will split faster than denominations during the Protestant Reformation. This is for your oozes, slimes, owlbears, teleporting tentacle puma monsters, flying death eyeballs, mind sucking squid people, et cetera, et cetera, ad infinitum. *Designer’s Note: We’re quite sure that we’ll have about fifty Monster Types a day or two after this hits gamers’ grubby little mitts. If there is one thing that gamers like more than broken character skills, it’s a plethora of monsters for bashing and smashing. What is the McGuffin? Believe it or not, this is always the hardest part. It’s usually a breeze to make up locations and villains – but the plot engine is always a life-sucker. For those unfamiliar with the techniques of Alfred Hitchcock, a McGuffin is a plot device that motivates the characters or advances the story, but the details of which are of little or no importance otherwise. (For more, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacGuffin). The McGuffin is some object (not necessarily a physical object) that the Big Bad and the Party are going to come into conflict over. What the item/object/training/quality/philosophy/thingee is really doesn’t matter – it has no practical use for the party in and of itself. McGuffins are the focus of
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WARHAMSTER! The Massively Multiplay
Page 4 and 5: An Introduction to Role-Playing (fo
Page 6 and 7: THE WARHMASTER MANIFESTO We hold th
Page 8 and 9: ADVENTURER JOB BOGIE STAT DICE DEFE
Page 10 and 11: Standardized Adventurer Test What w
Page 12 and 13: PARTY GOALS Goal Description Game E
Page 14 and 15: Be all that you can be, assuming al
Page 16 and 17: Elf FormaTivE Action Jobs Feel that
Page 18 and 19: Bogies Bogies are negative abilitie
Page 20 and 21: Powers LiST Power ATHLETE Certifica
Page 22 and 23: Power CHARM IT Certificate MBA PHD
Page 24 and 25: Power GRAZE DEAD Certificate PHD MB
Page 26 and 27: Power KNOW STUFF Certificate ANY St
Page 28 and 29: Power POLYMORPH (S/T/O) Certificate
Page 30 and 31: Power Stat Die All the Time SUMMON
Page 32 and 33: STEP STEP FIVE FIVE Array Your Stat
Page 34 and 35: STEP STEP SIX SIX SIX COMPUTE YOUR
Page 36 and 37: ARMOR Since the desire to “not di
Page 38 and 39: your whining. You may roll for a ne
Page 40 and 41: STEP STEP TEN TEN DING! GRATZ! Did
Page 42 and 43: Adventurer Actions During a player
Page 44 and 45: How to kill things! Adventurers are
Page 46 and 47: House rules! If you need us to expl
Page 48 and 49: The Simplicity of Setting Difficult
Page 50 and 51: This is the tasty part of the game
Page 52 and 53: Getting Skulls in the monster bowl
Page 56 and 57: lotsa stories and movies, here’s
Page 58 and 59: Example Adventure Courtesy of the M
Page 60 and 61: Each Dungeon should start with at l
Page 62 and 63: Stat Die HA M ST E R Boss Hit Die 6
Page 64 and 65: Stat Die HA M ST E R Boss Hit Die 4
Page 66 and 67: dM Quick Reference Danger Chart Dan
Page 68 and 69: +of Displacement +Poorly Tailored +
Page 70: BONUS ONUS ONUS MATERIALS MATERIALS
Page 73 and 74: MAP MAP 2 hall hall
Page 75 and 76: MAP MAP 4 VAULT VAULT
Page 77 and 78: MAP MAP 6 CHOOSE CHOOSE YOUR YOUR O
Page 79 and 80: MAP MAP 8 GRASS GRASS AND AND WALLS
Page 81: MAP MAP 10 10 DO DO IT IT YOURSELF
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