October 2024 post #2 notes on my current 5e campaign

I finished my last game in 2022 and in 2023 I ran a few random bits and pieces but I started a new 5e campaign in January 2024.

 

I elected to only have 2 players this time around so that a quorum could be easily established. If one person drops out, the game is off. Easy.

 

The party

 

Royce is playing a Lizard Rogue. He elected to have the standard subclass Thief. So far he has made great use of Steady Aim and Sneak Attack. As he usually plays Barbarians or at least front line attackers, this has been a nice change for him. He has also dealt tons of damage with Sneak Attack.

 

Cian was playing an Aasimar Paladin. He chose Devotion as his subclass. He is super hard to hit with his armour and shield on and likes to cast Shield O’Faith. He doesn’t bother with smiting for some reason so his damage output has been less but he has been a reliable tank.

 

They have been assisted at various points by a Warforged Cleric of Life who functioned as a heal bot. Also they have hired a variety of mercenaries at various points.

 

Mainly to reduce the amount of time I would spend managing the various NPCs and monsters I had them create secondary PCs who would help them and be tied to their XP levels. Royce chose a Barbarian Dwarf and Cian a Aarakocra Warlock. This was at level 9.

 

The campaign

 

I had always wanted to run The Enemy Within campaign. I had briefly ran it before for Cathy and Royce in Warhammer 1st edition and we got as far as the end of Book 2 Shadows over Bogenhafen. That was in 2016 I think. So 8 years later I got past that point, through book 3 as far as the final book, 5, skipping book 4 and 4a (Power Behind the Throne, Kislev).

 

Intro

 

They started separetly but were taken into slavery. They were made to fight in a gladiatorial arena but managed to escape.

 

1. Mistaken Identity

 

An exact, dead clone of one of the PCs was found on a route they were travelling on. Afterwards they were being pursued by some sort of bounty hunter who seemed to want the PC who resembled the clone dead.

 

2. Shadows Over Bogenhafen

 

Bogenhafen! They briefly attended the festival only to be forced to find the escaped three-legged goblin. In the sewers they encountered some sort of mythical demon guarding an altar. The city watch and council seemed terribly uninterested.

After further investigation and being made scapegoats for a murder, they managed to track down the site of the ritual being conducted to open a Chaos gate. As usual, failure in WFRP is encouraged so they were unable to stop the ritual occurring and demons sacked the town, complete with Tzeentch itself gobbling the fleeing crowds.

The PCs managed to escape anyway.

 

3. Death on the Reik

 

The boat! They acquired a boat after the events in Bogenhafen. They used it to trade goods for a little while and briefly a 3rd player character joined the campaign only to leave again.

Once again they clashed with various cultists and after much back and forth via the rivers of the Empire they acquired all the keys needed to find otu more about the mystery.

Castle Wittgenstein became their final destination - they sided with the outlaws and agreed to assault the cursed castle. They spared the life of the twisted (but affable) master of the castle but slew the true enemy, his mad necromancer daughter and her creation.

A skirmish with the cultists and the ratmen followed underneath the castle, which resulted in almost everyone dying and the warpstone being seized by the Skaven. Cian's character was brought back via Reincarnation, the only spell available to the Archdruid leading the outlaws. He came back as a Dwarf! The cleric GMPC came back as a human lady.

 

4. (Not-Middenheim)

 

I went back and forth on running Power Behind the Throne. It was such a change from the usual fighting of a 5e game that I decided eventually not to run it. Considering we only play virtually and with mics only a social game is much harder to run. I would be interested in returning to this as a mini campaign or whatever in future. There’s just so much content. Also I’ve never played Kislev so that was probably never going to happen anyway.

 

5. Empire in Flames

 

While we briefly started a sandbox dungeon/players-as-rulers simulation I quickly decided I wanted to wrap up the Enemy Within campaign first.

They got as far as the Crown Prince turning into a demon at the start of October 2024. Soon they will need to go and find the eponymous Warhammer of Warhammer Fantasy and discover the true heir to the throne.

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The monsters

 

I ran pretty much every Fiend/Demon enemy I could in the 2020-2022 campaign plus many types of Giant, Construct, Elementals plus some Celestials, Beasts and Abominations.

 

This time around it was like a return to my old 3e games circa 2010 - lots of humanoid enemies! This was in part due to the Warhammer setting.

 

Stuff I learned

 

In-person games needed

 

I love combat and have neglected roleplay

 

Notes on Roll20, D&D Beyond, Beyond20 etc

 

Roll20 pro/plus membership etc; space issues, terrible inner search engine

 

Beyond - shafted by sub; technical bugs here and there

 

Beyond20 is still great but occasional hiccup

 

For the future

 

I’d like to run Power Behind the Throne (in person) and maybe a Kislev/all the other Warhammer 1e scenarios/campaigns like the Grapes of Wrath, Lichemaster etc.

 

I’d spent hours coding/figuring out the rules of Space Crusade and making it playable on Roll20. I need to run at least one game to make sure it was worth it.

 

Other than that, it would be cool to run Call of Cthulhu, maybe Delta Green. I had an idea for a scenario years ago that I could dig up. My main issue with running CoC or World of Darkness of anything is my inability/unwillingness to read up on the lore of these settings. They’re just too dense. I’d rather use real life stuff or my own creations.

Other than that I have a few board games and whatnot I would like to run sometime soon.

 

Love/Hate #49 The Outer Worlds 45/68 achievements

My eyes were bleeding after Pathfinder so I took a break then played Outer Worlds for the first time ever.

Then 2 days later I finished it! 23 hours and 45 of the 68 achievements got.

I ran a melee character for simplicity and on the easiest difficulty and it was fine, a little bit boring a playstyle.

Within minutes of playing it, it reminded me of Fallout 4. Sure enough it's that engine but with the writers of New Vegas.

Within a couple of hours it was clear the writing was way better than Fallout 4. FO4 plays better but Outer Worlds is better written.

Starting out

You are one of a small number of people frozen IN SPACE and are rescued by a mad scientist who wants to free the rest of them for reasons.

It's cool because you can choose the background of your character to an extent, all of the jobs have an influence on what skills you possess. I chose Sous Chef as it directly affected 1 handed weaponry.

Oh YES I saw a resemblance to Sister Sage so I made her hair pink and went from there, only later to find out one of the companions you get looks exactly the same. Oops! Oh well.

Landing on a nearby world your accidentally kill your contact there and thus become de facto captain of the (Un)Reliable. After a bit of a tutorial.

The Unreliable is EXACTLY like the Serenity from Firefly. Well, pretty damn close. I loved that anyway.

Upon becoming a space faring captain you do get impounded at your next destination, the giant ship called the Groundbreaker but after some wrangling you are free to travel around a bit.

Later you unlock more destinations. I kind of liked the semi-linear nature of the game for the first half, then later it becomes more like a run of New Vegas or Skyrim where you fast travel around a lot.

I spent a long time trying to get a particular achievement to pop, killing 50 enemies with a blockball stick or whatever. Turns out I had already unlocked it without me realising and was just beating enemies to death with the equivalent of a metal cricket bat/croquet mallet.

The companions

Parvati - I thought she was cute and a nice addition to the party but painfully awkward. Dragging her around the galaxy to get her date sorted was a chore but rewarding.

Vicar Max - I credit him with making me think this game was worth playing. A holy man with a dark past, I found his 'companion move' one of the coolest. The moment I started to like this game was when I brought him the book he wanted before he joined the party and it's in French and he's furious. I lol'd.

Felix - a kind of forgettable anarchist of sorts, I made sure to do all his quests before I sided with the evil all-powerful Board. His dropkick move is hilarious.

Ellie - a noble pirate doctor. Hell of a combination. Did not use her much but she often quizzed me on my choices, why was I supporting the Board and such. Made me nervous when she did that, thought she would betray me or something.

Nyoka - this total badass was a lot of fun to have around. I did quite enjoy her companion move even if every single time she has to throw down a glass bottle and go AHHHHH. Did a ton of damage though so she was cool.

SAM - I got this dude last and I loved that had A) No companion quest B) no cut in dialogue C) was in some sort of situation with Ada D) fired double ACID launchers E) had a cool special move and F) was very strong and durable in the field.

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There is an achievement for acquiring a companion (almost impossible to miss unless you tell them all to fuck off). There is an achievement for getting all 6 of them. There are achievements for completing one companion's quest line and for completing all of their questlines. Upon doing so for each one you can power them up somewhat. 

I generally found the companions superflous but they were fun to have around for a while. Again, story mode difficulty makes companions less necessary but there is probably a sweet spot in the higher difficulty levels. They can be killed forever in the hardest difficulty so who knows.

This game also did a pretty good job of making the companions cut in during dialogue between you and various NPCs. In Fallout 4, they just arbitarily comment 'you tell 'em Blue' or some shite but here they can actually engage important NPCs in unique dialogue, depending on who you bring along. I often had Vicar Max with me who was happy enough with what I was up to. Parvati would nervously wonder if what we were doing was right but that was all.

Music and Maps

I really liked the OST. It starts off suitably grand sci fi and becomes more ominous as you explore the various worlds.

The planets you go to are so pretty.

I probably spent the most time on Monarch.

The mining asteroid world was gorgeous.

You must go back to the Serenity Unreliable in order to travel between worlds but once there (milliseconds) you can fast travel to any region you have found on the planet. Different worlds might have multiple regions with various settlements and points of interest.

Oh hi!

Finishing the game

After fucking around for a bit with various quests, it was time to end it.

On Monarch, Stellar Bay and the Iconoclasts can either go to war or make peace. 

I was following a (very light) guide that told me to get all related achievements I should make peace first, then reload and fight my way to the end with one side, then proceed. It did not say which way was better and the chatter online seemed mixed.

I was going to power on with one side wiped out (MSI) but reloaded and makde peace again. I'd rather that than the somewhat boring of Stellar Bay and having one side rule all.

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Same with Edgewater on the first planet. You can decided to keep it safe or destroy it with robots. Keeping it safe was easy for me as I had done all the quests so it was a mere dialogue choice not to destroy it. 

But reloading and opting to destroy it was a pain, especially as you then have to go and clear the town of robots anyway?

I reloaded AGAIN and chose via dialogue to keep Edgewater safe. There are good and bad endings for the game and various companions and factions are affected too but it is not that important (ie, no achievements are affected).

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Eventually you acquire the ship full of frozen ubermensch. You can choose to skip it across the galaxy with the help of your AI (advised) or try to do it yourself.

There is a special, unique, auto-fail ending wherein you are too stupid to do it correctly and fly the spaceship directly into the sun. I had made myself average intelligence at the start of the game (3/5) but with drug withdrawals I could get that to below average (2/5). This was NOT enough for the 'Dumb' option however. 

So, I was prepared to give up and do that another time but figured out through various Reddit posts and whatnot that if you suffer multiple concussions you can acquire a flaw that reduces your mental stats by 1, getting me to the requisite (1/5).

HOWEVER, I had all 3 Flaws acquired and thus could not get it. BUT I figured out that if you increase the difficulty to Hard, you can acquire more flaws. So I did that then spent a few minutes standing next to explosions and voila. I switched the difficulty back down to nothing and then flew the spaceship into the sun. The things I do for achievements.

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This brings you to the point of no return which is just one big level, some sort of intergalactic prison. I may have ceased to pay attention to the plot at this point. I decided to side with the Board and made the mad scientist the enemy. Bit of an anticlimax boss.

I became ruler of the galaxy and was treated to an ending slideshow, classic Obsidian. Most of the endings seemed to be OK?

20 hours to complete the game (some of that time was reloading to do alternate stuff) and another 3 hours afterward to get various achievements.

Achievement round-up

After completing the game I immediately set about clearing various achievements. Some of them involved me re-speccing my skills for a small fee inside the spaceship. So I abandoned my 100 points in 1 handed weapons for example for more shooty stuff.

I had NEVER used a gun prior to this, even for a second. So as soon as the game ended I fired my first projectile weapon.

On two separate occasions I had to slaughter all of Monarch's settlements. This was enough the second time to get the '3 factions hate you' achievement.

I think the other time was 'kill 100 enemies with plasma damage' which I achieved by a burning sword and flamethrower.

Killing 20 enemies with n-rays was very fun. I just did it to a bunch of villagers and guards.

Killing an enemy affected by all 5 damage types was very hard. I eventually found an enemy tanky enough for it but it was tough.

Kill an enemy with a science weapon was kind of difficult, it was fun trying to find all 5 of these for starters but then simply shot an old lady.

I also never used time dilation or whatever its called during the main quest, it's more important for shooting I think?

'Improve gear 30 times' refused to pop when I was using mods alone but it finally did when I spammed a bunch of 'tinkering' as well. This was not essential in any way on piss easy difficulty but it will be when I eventually do the harder modes.

Kill an enemy under the influence of 4 science weapons - again, very difficult to pull off in a sense but eventually managed it with the help of 2 allies armed with them as well. I ad almost soft-locked myself from getting one of them, it was in a lab full of poisonous gas I may have released.

Kill 30 automechanicals with shock damage - I had been taking care to whack robots with shock weapons but did not seem to do any damage. Maybe the weapons I was using were weak/underlevelled. After finishing the game, a shock gun helped a lot. Plus the city Byzantium had loads of robots for me to kill...

Use medical inhaler 300 times - apparently this counts across multiple runs and I'd probably used mine <50 times BUT I decided to simply buy 100~ from various shops and simply stood and inhaled all 100 or so, then reloaded and did it again until it popped.

Hit 30 enemies in the groin during time dilation - silly but possible in a regular playthrough? I went to my friendly local town guards and shot them all repeatedly in the nuts, while in slow mo.

Next time

The only achievements I have left are:

Kill 50 enemies with sneak attacks (I will run a shooty character next time)

Complete game on Hard difficulty (doable)

Complete game on Supernova difficulty (difficult but doable, the Hard one also unlocks if you get this)

Collect all achievements (need all other achievements first)

19 more achievements that are tied to the DLCs which I don't have yet.

Conclusion

Good game, not brilliant but a nice new addition to my gaming history. I look forward to playing it again sometime next year.

Time to move onto something else!