Vampire Hunters turns seven through ten reports up

Hi all!

It took me a couple of weeks, but battle reports for the three scenarios we played in our last gaming weekend are up. In order below, with each entry featuring one of the battles:

Turns Seven and Eight
Turn Nine
Turn Ten, Day

It was a lot of fun, with Michael Weaver visiting from Texas and running the vampire forces for us. Rough for the players, though, there were three warband fatalities, and we didn't manage to locate or destroy another one of the main vampire's coffins.

I pinky promise to work this weekend on a page on the blog to host the rules, and I'll also link all of the battle reports for the campaign on that page.

I confess I had a lot of fun running the bad guys, although of course I was really rooting for the good guys. Honest.

Don't worry about the delay's numbertenox, these reports are well worth waiting for, even if they do make depressing reading from the heroes point of view!

Totally enjoying the battle reports.

mweaver wrote:

I confess I had a lot of fun running the bad guys, although of course I was really rooting for the good guys. Honest.

Quote :

The plan, suspiciously suggested by Torian the Elf, was to get them into the dungeon early to begin looking for coffins below ground.

Were you really rooting for the good guys? Either Torian wanted less stumpies close by or maybe sub-conciously you really wanted to split the good guy forces further to divide and conquer! Of course if the latter was the case then it may have back-fired since hopefully the loot found by the dwarves is useful to the good guys.

The dwarves had been making a lot of racist remarks. Since we had the ability to infiltrate two guys directly into the keep, Torian came up with his plan... and either (a) the dwarves made it and did a lot of looting for the team, or (b) they died horribly. So, win/win. The funny thing was once he suggested it there was no way the slayers could have been talked out of it.

Fantastic campaign.

I hope the vampire hunters will be more succesful in the second half.

Thanks for putting so much work in your reports.

We're making some changes with 1.3 of the rules that should make things a little less deadly, and also make it a bit easier to get to vampire coffins during coffin hunts.

I'm also going to add an optional rule at Michael's suggestion for a single "get out of death free" card for each player - allowing you to re-roll a post-battle injury roll for a hero or henchman once in the campaign.

Almost finished with a page on the blog to host the 1.2 version of the rules. I'll post here when those are public, then get started on the 1.3 changes.

Sounds good. My gaming group enjoys cooperative play (having done some RPG single hero style games) so I'm keen to see those campaign rules and even suggest them to my gaming group when we are looking for what to do for our next campaign.

RationalLemming wrote:

Totally enjoying the battle reports.

mweaver wrote:

I confess I had a lot of fun running the bad guys, although of course I was really rooting for the good guys. Honest.

Quote :

The plan, suspiciously suggested by Torian the Elf, was to get them into the dungeon early to begin looking for coffins below ground.

Were you really rooting for the good guys? Either Torian wanted less stumpies close by or maybe sub-conciously you really wanted to split the good guy forces further to divide and conquer! Of course if the latter was the case then it may have back-fired since hopefully the loot found by the dwarves is useful to the good guys.

As the dwarf player I must state that the only reason they didn't suggest someone else is that they wanted all the monsters for themselves and were disappointed in the few that they found (they found mostly loot on the random tables)

The two slayers kicked hinney in the dungeon. Only ran into one baddie bunch and obliterated them. Since one of the TS's is up to 7 attacks (frenzy) it's pretty much a go that they'll be pieces of baddies all over the place.

The rules are going to have to be tweaked since you run out of time badly once you are in the caverns. Just moving down the corridor takes an entire move and since we are playing time limited scenarios it'll be impossible to actually search the caverns. The TS were in perfect shape when the game ended.

"The [Troll Slayers] were in perfect shape when the game ended. "

Well, except for being short, ugly, and stinky, that is.

mweaver wrote:

"The [Troll Slayers] were in perfect shape when the game ended. "

Well, except for being short, ugly, and stinky, that is.

Yep , what I said. Perfect

Just starting work on 1.3.

Stamper / Cujo, the change that is likely for SchattenTurm as far as duration goes is that the above ground troops have limited time on a d6 roll to 30, exactly as normal. But, because the dungeon is funky and magical, there is no time limit for forces below ground at all. The individual exploring parties below ground may go till they route.

However, there may be no way possible to reach lower levels than to go through the teleporter up top. Stairs will not be guaranteed. I will probably add chance of finding teleporter entry points in the dungeon itself as well.

Monster chances will also probably be bumped, and I may lose the random corridor tables completely and replace them with seven or eight templates that you roll randomly to pick one. The rooms on those templates would be random still, it's just that the basic corridor layout would be fixed, so campaign master does not have to fret over random corridor / side-passage tables and re-arrange stuff to fit.

That sounds better. More efficient, time-wise, and more likely to insure a proper distribution of rooms.

Hi numbertenox,

Have you finished your campaign? Did the vampires win or did the forces of good prevail?

I'm keen to hear more.

They have not played since January. Real-life issues (don't you hate those?). But I think maybe soon. I do think he has a newer version of the rules... maybe not posted? I will nudge him.

Hi,

We're trying to setup a time to play again. One of our players had to have a bionic hip installed, so we suspended play while he was recovering ;-).

New version of rules should be up soon - I'll post here at Tom's when that is done.

We need to play soon. The dwarfs are getting restless. Need to thump something soon

:-)

I can be patient.

I hope recovery from the operation is swift and uneventful.

Ok. Looks like we are going to be playing again this weekend (Finally!) Looking forward to it since my crazed Troll Hunter picked up some new skills at the end of the last game. He's already ridiculous and these will make him more so :-)

Prob not the place to ask but here's a quick question. How do you handle 'Healing Herbs'? The rules are a bit vague.

Is it a one shot per herb (gotta rebuy)?
Is it a one shot per game with no rebuy?
Is it usable multiple times per game with or without a rebuy?

With the rules as written, you have them once purchased and they can be used more than once per game. We play with a modified version that allows them to be used only once per game.

For a long time I thought they were a "use once and they're gone" item.

If you go to the rules part of the forum, there is a longish thread somewhere.

Incidentally, in rules update 7.3.4(c) it notes that the healing herbs are an old elvish recipe and do not work on dwarves.

CujoQuarrel wrote:

Ok. Looks like we are going to be playing again this weekend (Finally!) Looking forward to it since my crazed Troll Hunter picked up some new skills at the end of the last game. He's already ridiculous and these will make him more so :-)

Hooray. I hope you all have a great time.

Have fun fellas, i'm sending positive thought for the good guys, they're gonna need it!

Alas , Alas it is not to be
Our third (the one with the bionic hip) cannot make it due to medical issues
I'm bummed.

Especially since it took me over 3 hours to get here (never hit rush hour traffic, it sucks)