Heroes of the Oldhammer Age (Original Warhammer) [OPEN]

[Starbeard]

(This is a copy of the official recruitment post, which is also found further down the thread here).

HEROES OF THE OLDHAMMER AGE
Open Sandbox Campaign with Mass Battles and Kingdom Building
ALWAYS RECRUITING

Allū! Ishtu-nushutim, and welcome, adventurers, to wondrous Hikuptah! From the rocky barrens in the north to the windswept deserts of the south, the Land of Ptah is a waterless and forsaken place, riddled with the tombs of unknown gods dead for a thousand memories.

Be you a foreign mercenary and adventurer, an escaped slave, or a fat prince thirsty for his due, riches and power beyond your ken await you here! They say there is a king in Hikuptah for every grain of sand.



FAQ
Campaign rules: Warhammer: The Mass Combat Fantasy Role-playing Game (1st edition). A very simple system, no experience needed to play.

Campaign themes: Sandbox campaign with themes found in classic sword and sorcery and weird fantasy, especially Howard's Conan stories. Characters have the ability to play at any level, from grave robbing to leading armies against rival warlords.

World setting influences: Inspiration is pulled heavily from Hyboria and a smattering of ancient kingdoms (Mesopotamia, Akkadia, Babylon, Old/New Egypt, with a dash of Carthage, Imperial China and Vedic India). There will be an oddball mix of classic and unorthodox fantasy races, with Howard/Lovecraft metaphysical horror. A tiny amount of gonzo oddities are sprinkled in for good measure.

Play style: The rules are quick and dirty. Much of the behind-the-scenes rules are pulled from the Heroes of the Dark Ages RPG. It is assumed that characters will drive toward carving out player kingdoms, but this is not necessary and there are no ultimate goals. Characters can rise very quickly, and can die just as quickly.

What do players do?: Turns will be set in ‘real-time’ as much as possible: players have a week to post what their PCs are doing, and over the weekend I process everything and write up the results for that week’s actions. Role-playing opportunities and adventures will be played out over the course of the week as mini-vignettes. There will be side threads where players can freely RP with me or each other, outside of the campaign timeframe, both for XP and to help build the campaign narrative (I’m being influenced a lot by Keenelf’s Westmarch game in how the sandbox structure will work).

The city of Odawal, gateway to Hikuptah…


The deserts and dried cities of the south…



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[Here is the original post]:
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I've been thinking of running some larger scale RPG on here, where the players start off as petty lords and build (or squander) their kingdoms in a sandbox environment. I'm thinking original Warhammer would be great first go for it, since it was designed specifically to allow for single character RP adventures as well as 6,000 figure mass battles using the exact same set of rules. I probably won't be able to get this started until later in the Summer (say mid-late July), but I'd like to get a sounding to see who's interested now while I'm thinking about it.

The actual details of the campaign would depend on who's interested, but I'm planning to run it like David Millward's Heroes of the Dark Ages RPG: every week, the players post what their characters are up to that week, and I post the results, with any individual role-playing encounters or battles that crop up being played out during the week. I might even make occasional 'campaign newsletter'-style posts. Battles will be fought out using pictures and descriptions to paint the scene, abstracting and free-wheeling things as necessary to keep things flowing (the rules generally support that anyway). As such, the players won't be concerned with trying to measure ranges or counting individual casualties, but will instead be getting into their roles as commanders and heroes on the battlefield.

As for the setting, this would all be coming from the 1983 Warhammer box, so there's no GW universe, no army lists, and no need to take itself too seriously. Just good old slapdash rules for causing slightly gonzo mayhem with Elves and Goblins and Jabberwocks and Menfish. Dwarves often make the best wizards. The combat is 'no guts, no glory', and many PCs are likely to die or suffer permanent maiming in some way. Magic is colourful, chaotic and corrupting, and the Lovecraftian element of forbidden horror is very strong. There may or may not be laser guns.

[arkansan13]

I would love to play in this.

[arkansan13]

This sounds awesome, I'm down.

[Starbeard]

Awesome! Well, that's one.

For anyone who might be wondering how WH can work as an RPG, it's because 1st edition Warhammer was designed as a 'mass battles role-playing game', before WFB and WFRP were split into two different games. It has a very Chainmail Fantasy Supplement/OD&D-like feel to it, where the PC personal statistics like Cool and Intelligence are given a rating of somewhere around 1-10, with no real rules tied to them—there are a few suggestions, but it's assumed that the group will start house ruling their own way of handling ability checks.

Combat is also similar to Chainmail in that 'hit points' are simply how many actual hits you can take before being incapacitated, and in almost all characters that's 1 (really high-level characters might be able to take 3 or 4 hits at most). Otherwise, once you get hit you dice to see if you're killed outright or merely laid low by some nasty bodily injury, like a severed hand or crushed left eye. That level of granularity is what makes it easy to handle battles between armies of hundreds.

I'm also planning on taking some ideas for simple game systems from Tony Bath's Hyborean campaign, and maybe Donald Featherstone and Martin Hackett's books on running grand campaigns. I've also got Heroes of the Dark Ages, and plan on referencing that whenever I can. It's got all sorts of great little nuggets for sandbox play, like turning bandit and hunting trade caravans, or setting up trade caravans of your own, or even trying to buy yourself into a town's public office.

[arkansan13]

I'm really excited about this. I have had the idea for a similar in scope campaign for a long time now, so I will be really interested to see how this turns out.

I have the original Warhammer box set as well as having bought Heroes of the Dark Ages last night. I also have an epub copy of Tony Baths Hyborean campaign stuff that I bought a while back.

So on the working of battles we would essentially be issuing orders IC with you interpreting how that would work out mechanically? Like someone would say "We need to take the left flank" and you would work that out to "well that would be x movement three inches"?

[Keehnelf]

I'm down--I look forward to seeing how this develops

[Starbeard]

Cool, Keehnelf!

[Starbeard]

I'm really excited about this. I have had the idea for a similar in scope campaign for a long time now, so I will be really interested to see how this turns out.

I have the original Warhammer box set as well as having bought Heroes of the Dark Ages last night. I also have an epub copy of Tony Baths Hyborean campaign stuff that I bought a while back.

So on the working of battles we would essentially be issuing orders IC with you interpreting how that would work out mechanically? Like someone would say "We need to take the left flank" and you would work that out to "well that would be x movement three inches"?

The battles will basically go like you describe. I'll try my best to have maps drawn up with units placed on them, showing the updated layout of the battle when it seems necessary. I'm not sure yet whether I'll be using a dedicated mapping program, Illustrator or roll20.net, I'll have to experiment with it a bit. Since everything is a little more abstracted that what you'd see on a table top, I'm willing to fudge the measurements and wheelings within reason. Depending on how large the battles may be, I might even try experimenting with forcing players to post in a private sub thread, forcing them to actually relay information or travel across the battlefield to find out what's going on beyond their zone of command.

––––
GM: After lining the front line of troops up three deep, Byrox rides out to the band's exposed left flank to wait for the oncoming enemy. A quick glance down the line shows that your men have successfully anchored their right flank against the dense wood line. The mass of orcs are clustered at the far end of the field, some 200 paces off—that's good, you'll have plenty of time to litter them with arrows before they make contact.

Byrox's player: 'Keep the line steady, men! We're barring their only escape—let them come to us, and fire at will when they come in range!' Byrox takes a look back to see if his small band of auxiliaries have set up in reserve yet. His orders were to behind the front line, just within charge range, but angled off to the left flank a little—if another orc band comes out of the woods to the left, he wants to have the auxiliaries in range to block the flank.

GM: The orc warband comes rushing up the field, the occasional crude arrow flying through the air but not quite making it to the line. As they come into range, the human bowmen begin to let their arrows fly. Most of the arrows disappear into the crowd of orcs, but some are obviously hit, being swallowed up by the rushing horde as they tumble (2 casualties). As the orcs near, Byrox gets a better sense of the size of the enemy: they must be more than 250 strong, greatly outnumbering his own troops! Hopefully the past month's training will counteract the disadvantage in numbers…

Byrox's player: Byrox gulps. (If we were to pull back, could we outrun the orcs before they charged into us?)

GM: Probably. [makes an Intelligence and/or Cool check] Byrox determines that the orcs are still too far away to attempt a charge; if he wishes to call a retreat, he'd have to do so right now and hope his troops don't dilly-dally.
––––

Also, Heroes is fantastic. I haven't actually run the game yet, but I've flipped through it a few times to pull some game systems into D&D games when I need them, and they work great. For this I'll just pull stuff straight out of Heroes when it's a 'general' rule, but the rules and tables that are specific to a region or culture will most likely get tailored to whatever our game world happens to be. Maybe I'll call this hybrid homebrew rule set 'Heroes of the Oldhammer Age'.

[arkansan13]

Cool, that's pretty much how I pictured the battles working in my head.

Honestly this sounds like an absolute blast. The set up of the campaign sounds like it is quite well suited to play by post. I take it that there will likely be a competitive element among players?

[Starbeard]

Yeah, I think the Heroes-style format would work really well as a play by post.

I've thought about player competition quite a bit for this. I've run war game campaigns and RPGs that revolved around PC competition before, and they've all actually been quite successful. So of course I'd like to see that here, and just assume that players will be making and breaking their own alliances as befits their characters. The Warhammer alignment system actually encourages that, as Evil characters get triple experience points for betraying their own friends and family.

On the other hand, the trick to a good competitive game is in ensuring that no one's really playing 'to win', but to help weave a great story with everyone else—after all, the 'losing' side often has the better stories to tell afterward! It seems like that's just easier to do when playing face-to-face. Also, I'm not sure how open folks are to competitive gaming here on the boards, but so far my experience is that most would rather play cooperatively.

As I get things ready we can keep the topic open, but I imagine the final decision will be to simply let everyone do what they will in good faith, and dissuade anyone from taking any competition too seriously by encouraging lots of universal camaraderie in the OOC threads. If there's a problem or concern that crops up, then I'll draft up a basic constitution for PvP conduct to keep things above board.

[arkansan13]

Agreed on all points. I've run and played in games in the past that had a competitive element among the players, the fun of it isn't in winning but in the drama and excitement creates. I would be open to it supposing other are, if they aren't that just as well too.

[Rusty Tincanne]

I would like to join if there is still an opening. Per our PM, m main interest would be in playing a skaven, which are not in the 1st edition rules. I have several of the skaven army book and can shoot stats to you if you are interested.

[Starbeard]

I would like to join if there is still an opening. Per our PM, m main interest would be in playing a skaven, which are not in the 1st edition rules. I have several of the skaven army book and can shoot stats to you if you are interested.

Sure thing. I have a copy of WH 3rd edition, but if you give me some of the basic stat blocks and special abilities from your books I can figure how best to put them into 1st edition terms. Before the Old World setting was created, Warhammer used terms generic terms for humanoid races: 'lizardman', 'manfish', 'treeman'. For skaven I'll probably keep the same convention and use ‘ratmen'.

The only races that are given PC creation profiles are human, elf and dwarf, but it assumes these will be used as a guideline in writing up our own profiles for whatever races we want. I've had a couple of ideas on how to handle this, and I thought I'd see what people found most enticing:

1. The starting available races are humans, dwarves and elves. Players roll up their first PC on the race table, but have the option of choosing after that. When a PC encounters a new sentient race, it is added to the list of available races.
2. As above, except that whoever first encountered the new race gets to help design it. The player completes a short profile for the race from a stat sheet I'll provide (which will include things like whether they have a feudal/communal/tribal town structure, if rulership is decided by election/dynasty/contest, etc.), and can also write up a short description of other details (e.g., ratmen call themselves skaven, and their wizards—called Grey Seers—must have grey or white fur; ratmen with black fur are always separated at birth and spend their lives training in elite combat units).
3. Before the game starts, each player chooses a unique race and fills out a race profile as above. I'll then take these and flesh out the campaign map/setting based on the profiles. Players are not restricted to having to play the race they create (in fact, see the bottom about game theme). Future races can be developed and added as the above options.
4. We all just decide which major races we'd like to see in the game, and I’ll go away and flesh them out on the map myself. Whether or not all races are available at the start can also be up to a similar vote.

For the overall game atmosphere, rather than taking a generically high fantasy approach, or GW’s Hanseatic League approach, in my head I see this game having a heavy Robert E. Howard, Conan-esque feel to it. Many of the troops and races will be full of ancient, Biblical and/or pre-historical exoticisms from all over the world, but medieval technology and troop types will still be thrown in to flesh it out. Some empires and races will be more unified than others, so race wars will certainly be a thing, but there's nothing stopping a player or empire from being mixed race/alignment. For example, a human PC can muster up his town's human army, bolstered by some dwarven mercenaries and an enslaved orc warband (although you might regret deploying the dwarves and orcs next to each other, or garrisoning them in the same camp).

[arkansan13]

This sounds really cool to me. I like options 1 and 2 personally.

The whole Conan-esque sword and sorcery vibe sounds good to me as well. I'm kind of burnt out on high fantasy and have been moving back to a harder sword and sorcery for a while now.

[Starbeard]

Alright, I've got most of the books I'll be using out now, and start putting the basic campaign rules together as I sift through them. I'm mostly reading through Tony Bath's Ancient Wargaming and Martin Hackett's Fantasy Wargaming for ideas. After I skim those for ideas I'll set up a campaign subforum and start the process of getting the game ready.

At the moment I'm thinking of starting the campaign area either at the edge of a vast desert, or entirely within a desert with other climate types scattered around the edges.

Players will be free to choose the race of their PCs, but I'll have a table for those who get a kick out of rolling it up, anyway.

There are five possible alignments, but most races are restricted in which alignments they can be:

Good: experience doubled when defeating Evil beings; experience deducted for defeating other Good beings.
Evil: experience doubled when defeating Good beings; experience tripled when defeating own friends/family.
Neutrality: no modifiers.
Avarice: experience doubled for money gains; all other experience ignored.
Hunger: experience quadrupled if you eat the creature you defeated; all other experience ignored.

Halflings, for example, can be Evil, Neutral, or Hungry. One of the many dangers of the desert plains are the roving tribes of cannibalistic halfling nomads. The ones who live in the swampland won't try to eat you, but being Evil they will likely sacrifice you to the gods of chaos, if they don't throw you into the minotaur breeding pits instead.

[arkansan13]

Sounds awesome.

[Keehnelf]

There's nothing more charming than non-standard halflings

[arkansan13]

Any idea of a time frame on this yet?

[Starbeard]

Yes! Now that I just got back from some travelling, my work has backed up until the end of the month. This means that I won't have any time to really get the game started until the very end of July/beginning of August. However, what I can do right now is revive this recruitment thread, get the game board up and running, and slowly start adding the game prep threads so we can launch into things in 2-3 weeks. I have a campaign map set up with basic information on city-states and locations, as well as the character creation & magic house rules drafted up, so those will be the first things to get added to the board.

[Starbeard]

Allū! Ishtu-nushutim, and welcome, adventurers, to wondrous Hikuptah! From the rocky barrens in the north to the windswept deserts of the south, the Land of Ptah is a waterless and forsaken place, riddled with the tombs of unknown gods dead for a thousand memories.

Be you a foreign mercenary and adventurer, an escaped slave, or a fat prince thirsty for his due, riches and power beyond your ken await you here! They say there is a king in Hikuptah for every grain of sand.



FAQ
Campaign rules: Warhammer: The Mass Combat Fantasy Role-playing Game (1st edition). A very simple system, no experience needed to play.

Campaign themes: Sandbox campaign with themes found in classic sword and sorcery and weird fantasy, especially Howard's Conan stories. Characters have the ability to play at any level, from grave robbing to leading armies against rival warlords.

World setting influences: Inspiration is pulled heavily from Hyboria and a smattering of ancient kingdoms (Mesopotamia, Akkadia, Babylon, Old/New Egypt, with a dash of Carthage, Imperial China and Vedic India). There will be an oddball mix of classic and unorthodox fantasy races, with Howard/Lovecraft metaphysical horror. A tiny amount of gonzo oddities are sprinkled in for good measure.

Play style: The rules are quick and dirty. Much of the behind-the-scenes rules are pulled from the Heroes of the Dark Ages RPG. It is assumed that characters will drive toward carving out player kingdoms, but this is not necessary and there are no ultimate goals. Characters can rise very quickly, and can die just as quickly.

What do players do?: Turns will be set in ‘real-time’ as much as possible: players have a week to post what their PCs are doing, and over the weekend I process everything and write up the results for that week’s actions. Role-playing opportunities and adventures will be played out over the course of the week and mini-vignettes. There will be little side-threads where players can freely RP with me or each other, outside of the campaign timeframe, both for XP and to help build the campaign narrative (I’m being influenced a bit by Keenelf’s Westmarch game in this).

The city of Odawal, gateway to Hikuptah…


The deserts and dried cities of the south…