As the PDF is now available and thus any secrecy has been lifted, I wondered if any of you who GM'd a game at the convention would like to share with the rest of us your tales of how your games went? Or maybe there are any of the actual players on the forum who'd like to tell us how it went?

Did it go to plan? Did the players impress you above and beyond the written adventure? Did any players fail so catastrophically with the mission?

Basically, how did it all go?

Share with us your tales of Glory / Doom!

Going to try and see if I can get together enough people to run a game, I'll see if I have a story to tell when I'm done.

Thanks Psion! I waing someone would get the ball rolling.

That was meat to say "was hoping" but my keyboard couldn't keep up!

Sure. I had a full 5 players. Only 1 player had played DH before, and 2 others were familiar with WH40k. The last 2 had no clue about either, but were interested.
I'll make a synopsis failrly brief.

** SPOILER ALERT - DO NOT READ IF YOU EXPECT TO PLAY THIS ADVENTURE **

They took a little bit of coaxing to get into the groove of the game. They arrived in the Maw, a bit perplexed on what to do from there. With some subtle suggestions they thought to use their sensors to pinpoint a more likely location. Once they found the debris field, they expected a trap and were on edge when deciding how to get to the Bounty. In fact, they even doubted that the leaking drive craft was the Bounty and thought it was a decoy. Some further sensor scans (and a bit of reassurance from the GM) and they decided it wasn't a trap (entirely, anyway) and that the powered ship was indeed the Bounty. They took a single red-shirt with them and headed over to the Bounty on a guncutter (having discarded the idea to take the Venture into the debris field). Despite the power and lights on the bridge, they decided to dock mid-ship (still paranoid it's a trap!). Appropriately, the Captain player rememebered to be the first one to set foot upon the Bounty, and claimed it in his own name (causing many giggles). They cautiously made there way towards the bridge. On the way, they discovered some dead crew members. Successful Medicae tests revealed they were asphyxiated. They also noticed and noted the numerous Toxic warnings on various bulkheads and doorlocks as the passed them. Without incident, they reached the bridge.

I drew out an extremely large room, replete with numerous consoles and chairs. I then proceded to lay out about 2 dozen skeleton and zombie miniatures, lying them down and telling the players that they are 'corpses of dead crewmembers, in varying states of decomposition'. Central to the room was the throne-like captain's chair with the Navigator and the corpse of the captain at his feet. I also put 3 floor-vent grates at various places around the room. I had the players move/position their miniatures inside the bridge, and only once they approached the captain's chair (and thus, everyone was positioned well into the room) did I read the passage and have the Navigator awaken. I gave them a moment to respond, stressing quickly. Some tried to talk with the Navigator, while the engineer headed to an engineering console to try to open the doors.
A few corpses rose to their feet, and I stood up a few of the skeleton miniatures. The players said "Aha! Of course, that's why he put those minis on the map". Then they looked worried, as they realized just how many minis were on the map. The engineer failed his roll to open the doors by a large amount. Trask, standing in front of the navigator, fires a shot at the navigator, revealing the protective field. The pilot dodges some zombies and tries a shot from the back of the navigator, to no avail. The others take some shots at zombies, and either miss or knock them down. I tip over the model. They think its dead. The missionary squeals in glee and flames with impunity.
Next round more zombies rise up, and the first zombies get into melee. I roll well (this would be a trend most of the day), hitting several of the PCs with their warp-enhanced metal shards, and doing some significant damage. The PCs don't seem too worried yet. They shoot or melee a few more, again knocking the miniatures down. Only once the bodyguard attacked with her bolter, causing a fury and doing over 20 damage, did I remove a model. It was then the zombie's turn and more stood up, including some that had been knocked down previously. Only then did they realize ... 'Oh crap, he's standing them back up again! Wait ... didn't he remove a model when Lorayne hit him? Yep, sure enough there it is. Oh god, this is gonna suck ...' They looked on with dismay as the hordes grew and grew. A few more rounds go by. Half the PCs were below half wounds by this time, and Trask (who had gotten himself somewhat surrounded) actually reached 0 wounds, and had to spend a Fate point for some fast healing. They still didn't talk about retreating, so I gave them a nudge. "They just seem to keep coming and coming, you don't know how much longer you can hold out if you remain here ... " It was then that they realized the ventilation grates. I decided to be nice, and not worry about having any fans chopping up the PCs. They managed to time things in intiative order that the engineer (who was last in order) managed to open a grate and hold it open for everyone else to dive down into the vents, before he jumped in as the zombies closed.
Time was running low, so I mentioned some zombie pursuit, but did not run any combat rounds. They eventually lost the pursuit and began to head to their guncutter. On the way they ran into Erart. Despite being suspiscious of him, then agreed to let him lead them to the other survivors. (funny note here, the missionary and captain nearly executed Erart for heresy. A slip of the tongue on my part, where he claimed they were doomed and not even the Emporer could save them. I managed to have Erart talk them out of it, but they still thought he might be corrupted by Chaos/the Warp).
Once among the survivors, the Trask made an excellent Charm roll and won their trust. They fully divulged the details of the late captain's plan for the Gellar field. The PCs quickly clung to this plan and headed for the Core (without Erart, however). Once there, an excellent Tech Use roll got the Core Cogitator online easily. There was some confusion at first, when they tried to talk to the Cogitator and kept being told access was denied. Without prompting, however, one of the PCs thought to say the Bounty's captain's name, which granted them access. This was immediately followed by "The ship has been infested by a Warp entity. We need to raise the Geller field to remove the warp entity fromt he ship." This, of course, is exactly what needed to be said to get the Geller field raised. I would have suspected someone had cheated and read the adventure ahead of time (because it was so right on), but I knew that none of them had acquired the booklet yet. Kudos for them. They then had the presence of mind to think of getting ship schematics from the Cogitator, then use ventilation shafts that are in the ceiling of the bridge to effect a surprise attack on the Navigator. Their plan was to drop into the room in front of the Navigator and unload everything into him at once. At this point, we were running a bit late, and the plan sounded so excellent, that I assumed their combined firepower (plus surprise round) would have taken him out within the first round or two, despite his number of wounds (heck, a 1d10+7 Bolter with Tearing alone could possibly do it in 2 rounds by itself).
At this point we ere wrapping up, so I asked what they wanted to salvage from the Bounty. They decided to drive the Bounty out of the debris field, using the guncutter (and assistance from the Venture) to navigate and shoot a pathway out. With some good Tech-use (sensors) and piloting rolls they made it out with minimal damage to the Bounty.
Some excellent ideas from the group, and everyone had a blast during the combat slugging it out with the puppets. Win for Trask and the Venture!

Space Monkey said:

We'll see, I have to see if anyone's interested first and even then, I'm making a few additions that should hopefully stretch out the adventure and keep the players guessing.

That sounded like a lot of fun there, dvang! I wish my players were that imaginative

Played it last nigth, and a good time was had by all. A little break from our regular DH campaign with new characters for everyone was fun in itself, and people played their special abilities with gusto. The player controlling the captain doing his best Schwartzenegger impression calling out "You can do it!" when enacting his Commanding Prescence, etc etc.

But there were a few issues that gave me trouble as the GM, and having to fudge a few things, particularly involving the first fight against Orden. The text specifies that the shield stops "all but the most powerful blow" and that he is "almost impossible to harm him", "practically impossible for the PCs to breach it (see Ordens profile). Yet I found no stats for this shield, nor for the rate of his regeneration. More importantly, nothing is said about his "Navigator's Oculus" that he retreats into: What's to stop the players from trying to follow him after they've dealt with the zombies?

My players actually slaughtered the zombies with not too much trouble. Probably some epic fail on my part as GM, but Lorraine's boltgun made short work of enemies in quick order, and as several rounds pass between each wave of re-inforcements they weren't overrun. And of course they all had their void-breathers, expecting nastyness

I fudged it, saying the door/hatch to the occulus was protected by the psy-shield, but some guidance here would have been nice. The rest of the little scenario was all right, and we all had a blast. Looking very much forward to the real thing! This was miles better than "Shattered Hope"

?? The text specifies that the shield stops "all but the most powerful blow" and that he is "almost impossible to harm him", "practically impossible for the PCs to breach it (see Ordens profile). Yet I found no stats for this shield, nor for the rate of his regeneration.

A: I interpreted it as the *only* way to affect him was the 'large explosion' that they give in the same section, or to breach the hull causing him to retreat. Thus, no reason to give any stats for the shield.

?? More importantly, nothing is said about his "Navigator's Oculus" that he retreats into: What's to stop the players from trying to follow him after they've dealt with the zombies?

A: Luckily, I didn't have to deal with this, but I would assume it is hardened and shielded for the Navigator's protection. I believe the Occulus is the Navigator's chair/container/etc where he normally is situated when navigating the ship. It would indeed be nice to have a bit more information, but it shouldn't be too hard to come up with some way to relate that it would take hours of plas-cutting etc to open it. Honestly, I think the thought is that there should *always* be enough puppets up and moving to provide a screen between him and his escape, so there will never be a chance for the PCs to follow him if he flees.

?? My players actually slaughtered the zombies with not too much trouble. Probably some epic fail on my part as GM, but Lorraine's boltgun made short work of enemies in quick order, and as several rounds pass between each wave of re-inforcements they weren't overrun. And of course they all had their void-breathers, expecting nastyness

A: Lorayne's Bolter has the best bet of taking them out permanently, being 1d10+7. That means, disregarding Fury, she needs to roll a 8, 9, or 10 for damage to actually eliminate one. You probably needed to either have more puppets start in the bridge, or send more puppets in after a few rounds (dropping from vents, perhaps, etc) if they were rolling well for damage. Keep the horde coming in numbers. They only have 2 clips each, so eventually they'll run out of ammo, and THEN they'll really be in some trouble. It sounds like you just didn't send enough puppets against the PCs. If they permanently kill some, make a few more appear. I would suggest for this fight to, every round, have more puppets on their feet and attacking the PCs than the previous round. Regardless. The point at this point is not for the PCs to fight and win, but to have the PCs get a look at the Navigator and worm and then flee. You need to make them flee. This means, keep adding more and more puppets, however you can, until the players get the idea that it is hopeless and decide to flee the bridge. This is a light cruiser, with a crew of several hundreds. The Navigator can easily raise other puppets in other portions of the ship and send them up to the bridge if he needs reinforcements. Personally, I saw the bridge as being huge (it's a light cruiser) as well as it having been the sight of a 'last stand' by the remaining crew. This means a big battle with lots of corpses. That's why I had over 2 dozen puppet models against my 5 PCs. They just couldn't permanently kill enough of them. I did also fudge the '5 rounds to get back up' rule, though. I only had my puppets go down for a single round before they would get back up. If they permanently kill some one round, describe more puppets dropping from vents in the ceiling, or coming in through a side door, or crawling out of a crawlspace, etc, and add even more models than they took off.

We played the scenario with the basic characters (Sarvus,Lorayne,Nathin) and had a fun time, (I will refer to warp puppets as zombies as that was how everyone thought of them during the game)

Once they arrived in the battlegrounds Nathin used his tech-use to locate the ship and they travelled safely with the guncutter to land close to the bridge......a succesfull medicae test rvealed the death of the crew before they entered the bridge and met Orden, The battle started of good with zombies actually dieng alot, though Orden was unscratched, then Orden made one attack against Nathin and he was almost down.......I Improvised now thinking that as Orden and the worm both are psychic things I could use some psychic powers.....Lorayane who ripped holes through the zombies with her bolters had to be dealt with and I forced her to take a S test (after succesfull WP test from Orden) in order not to see her Bolter get thrown into the void outside the bridge.......this failed......the redshirts they had taken with them where dieng and I decided that one of them should try to head to the vents......the hint was taken up and it was now things where starting to get intresting..........Nathin throwed himself down a vent (tech used revealed a fanless one) pursued by a group of zombies, while Sarvus fought a fighting retreat to a vent, Lorayne however had a new idea, she had two clips of useless bolter ammo and she used the cables at the captain throne to make them blow up allowing them a relatively safe retreat.

Once they where down the vent they found a way to seal them of and went walking through the corridors,Nathio had taken some tests earlier understanding that they needed to get to the machine spirit but I still sent them to meet the survivors....they didn´t meet Eckhart but rather a lost survivor that was praying to the emperor in a corner. Being allowed to see a very poor map that Nathin could acces he led them to the survivors. Here I added some things of my own, there where three rooms they could benefit from finding, the equipment room for weapons to fight with, the security room to see where the zombies are and the machine spirit room too disable Ordens psyshield. They first went to the security room and saw a pattern in the zombie movement giving them an easy route to the weapons cabin, in the weapons cabin I gave them a plasmagun, lasguns and experimental fire grenades, the grenades proved very usefull against the zombies and they easily accesed the machine spirit, after a while they where able to convince the machine spirit to turn on the gellar field and return the suggested power levels. They then went to kill Orden........Lorayne was first as the others went to talk to the survivors and she fought an epic last stand with the plasmagun but was after 9 or ten rounds forced to use a fate and was then rescued by the rest......they pursued Orden and found him.....a massive plasmashot took him down to a few wounds and teared a whole in the hul behind him almost thrwoing him out, then he was cut down by Sarvus powersword and the worm flew out in the warp.

Excellent! Just a note (although, of course, a GM may change things as he sees fit!) Orden isn't supposed to attack in the first fight. He just sits there behind his psy-shield and watches his puppets attack.

Sounds like a fun game, though!

I ran Forsaken Bounty last Saturday night for my girlfriend and a good friend (who's also my neighbor). Angelo played Trask - a new role for him, as he doesn't usually play the leader / captain. Jen played Thornhallow - a new role for her (the heavy). We were partially playing at Jen's request, actually - I had brought the pack from FRPG Day, and flipping through she totally glommed onto Thornhallow when I described RT as in the vein of "Goth Firefly" ... ). I ran the other three pregens as NPCs, running Tsanthos as the main NPC in that regard.

The adventure pretty much ran straight as written. It was a bit railroady, though neither player complained - both understood it was an intro / pilot episode. They enjoyed it enough to request that tomorrow's 4th of July bbq be another session. We've got three more players joining us, and Angelo will be playing an Eldar Ranger / Xeno companion this time around.

The rules brief worked nicely - I ran the game from the kit, rather than relying on my copy of DH to "fill in" the blank spots. I had pulled DH regardless, thinking I could use it for critical hits and also to add a Fear check when Orden first awakened. In the end, I didn't use criticals and the Fear check, using DH, wasn't a great idea on my part.

I also put together a RT / DH photo slide show and sound track, which ran on the TV and stereo during the game. We gamed in a living room, and it was a nice add to have constant visual reinforcement of the setting, along with some moody music.

I ran it for some friends last Friday and it went fine. Though they used some fine tactics with the Malaki's Flamer. They set up a choke point and then slaughtered the Meat Puppets, the flamer did not put them down permanently but it gave them time to do the job. They also were completely paranoid about hitting pockets of vaccume and wore full Void Suits. It worked to their advantage when they found the navigator, they just blew out the windows to force him to retreat. To give them some danger I threw in a fairly tough daemon that was lurking in Engineering when they tried to restart the master cogitator. The final showdown was really anticlimatic. Lorayne opened up with a Full Auto Burst with her Boltgun and rolled a 02 to hit, making all 4 rounds hit the Navigator, it gave him a really bad day when she rolled the Emperor Fury not once or twice, but four times.

The group really liked it though and now can't wait for the main game to come out.

dvang said:

** SPOILER ALERT - DO NOT READ IF YOU EXPECT TO PLAY THIS ADVENTURE **

I'm assuming that was the group at Guradian Games. When you ran it for our DH group, we were born in the groove!

LOL, the best part was our Capt. Trask actually taunted the Navigator, asking for more zombies! "That the best you can do, you wimp!"

So DVANG just added on a handful of more zombie/puppet minis. This made everyone else groan, but the player playing Trask would not let up. Down to zero hit points and he was still taunting. I was playing Nathan, and brought up the specs for power on the bridge, and told Trask where the power to the captains chair came from. Trask cut open the decking there with his force sword and created an explosing big enough to hurt the Navigator and almost kill Trask.

I got some very good Tech Use rolls at the bridge controls and found it would take at least 30 minutes to disable all power from the bridge, but would be a lot quicker from the Engine Room. But the ease at knocking down (temporarily most of the time) the zombies was kind of a narcotic to our RPG group. It felt like we were winning until we thought about it.

When the zombie of the captain stood up, Nathan realized the Navigator had turned against him. "You know what this means, don't you? There has been a mutiny on the Bounty!" More groans.

Then we got all confused about what made a dead puppet stay down. We thought it was fire at first. We thought there was some trick and we needed to fingure out the trick before we ran out of ammo. But with 200 bodies on the bridge to keep the zombies coming, we eventually took the hint and jumped into two different air shafts.

When we ran into Erart the pilot tried to shoot him, but missed. We had some good role playing fun in the Cogitator Room. The Cogitator asked Trask who he was, and he said "Captain Trask, and I claim this ship for salvage." hold up his writ. The Cogitator was not impressed, so Nathan claimed to be the original captain of the Bounty. That worked like a charm, and we raised the Geller Field and cut power to the bridge.

Then back up for revenge. We got the ship back, a bit damaged, but still in the black, profit-wise.

** SPOILER ALERT - DO NOT READ IF YOU EXPECT TO PLAY THIS ADVENTURE **

Yeah, that post was about the demo group, not you guys!

The puppets are pathetically easy for the RT crew to take down, with only 6 wounds and a T of 2. I think most of the weapons do 7-8 damage minimum. Though, I didn't think it would as much of a narcotic to you guys as it was. Ha! Yeah, Trask just kept telling me to put on more puppets. Since they are basically infinite at that point, I happily obliged. No one can say I'm a GM who doesn't listen to his players! LOL!

I was a bit disappointed that the Navigator wasn't tougher without the shield. I mean, he's got a good T and lots of wounds, but he still went down in what, 2 rounds of combat? Too many nasty high-damage RT weapons, heh.

I had to do some fast thinking for your options at the bridge controls. You aren't supposed to really be able to do anything at the bridge per the adventure, but it seems reasonable to me that the bridge controls would technically be useable. The difficulty, though, is trying to do that with puppets chewing on you or sticking warp-enhanced jagged pieces of metal through your abdomen.

Highlights of our game-

As the guncutter negotiated the asteroid field, it was hit by debris and the cargo hold (full of redshirts and salvagers) was holed. A couple of people got sucked out the hole, then one particularly fat salvager got stuck as he was sucked out, feet first, temporarily sealing the breach. The Missionary organised the repair crew and the crew came by with iron sheets and wielding torches. Getting them into position, the Missionary commended the still-living Salvager to the Emperors Grace and then kicked him out of the ship so the crew could drop the sheet and patch the breach!

Initially beaten and outnumbered by the Navigator and puppets, my crew fled the first encounter after 3 rounds (and the Rogue Trader burning a Fate Point) and sought allies. They managed to get the engines and gellar field up and moved the ship out of the debris field so they could get reinforced by redshirts. THey also recovered the Ships Commissars Powerfist, and the badly injured rogue trader lent his Powersword to the ace pilot. The missionary with the Powerfist and Voidfarer with the sword, then proceeded to tackle the navigator as the redshirts blew away the puppets. The energised red fists of the Navigator met the hulking powerfist and battle royale commenced. Eventually it was ended by a powersword decapitation, Highlander-style!

SJE

This scenario sounds fun, i must remember to run it with my group when we next meet up.

Hi there!

I played `Forsaken Bounty`with my group and it didn´t run according to plan, but I never expected it in the first place. My player are quite into all the WH40K stuff thus they had their own ideas of how to rescue the ship. They wantd it for themselves and they actually managed! But I played a Prologue so they had the chance of doing all the planning necessary. Give your players some leeway and you will get quite astonishing ideas!

Play it and have fun!

The Emporer protects (Even silly players!)

I'm curious as to how your players rescued the ship. I was under the impression that it was supposed to be irrevocably damaged. What was their devious plan?

Well two months later, I finally had a captive audience to play through the Forsaken Bounty with.

I originally had been lead to expeect seven players drop by and whipped up two extra characters for it; a second Arch Militant and a Explorator I made by temporarily borrowing a friend's Dark Heresy book and fudging the attribute numbers.

In the end, we only had five players and a very silly game. Nathin, Trask, Dominic, and my two fudged characters ended up being used. Nathin was promptly renamed Shemp (of the three stooges,) the Sovereign Venture was called "The Flying Circus," the homemade Arch-Militant was Arsenal Warhead, and the Explorator player was the group's resident goofball and barely stayed in his chair let alone was able RP a proper emotionless representitive of the AdMech. The only guy who was really into the game seriously was Trask's player and he did rather well considering I somewhat forced the role onto him (I was not going to balance being the GM and the RT, I barely did all that well with the first job.)

I had them start with the prep work for the endeavor, giving them options to get the general gist for roleplaying a Rogue Trader and his crew as well as making the appropriate skill rolls. And right off the bat it was hilarious. I had randomly decided that this was their ninth endeavor and had failed the last eight; Trask's player picked RIGHT up with an appropriate berating of his crew. I was also generous with their rolls, especially in the beginning (since there wouldn't be much of a point of running the adventure otherwise if they couldn't get the writ of salvage.)

Travelling to the Emperor's Bounty went without trouble, largely because the group was starting to veer off so I forced the discovery of the debris field and let them take it from there. The adventure went fairly by the book, unfortunately I was reading the descriptions verbatim in some places but no one seemed to notice except for when I pointed out that the routes to the engine room had been sealed off (Trask's player had smartly wanted to go to engineering instead of the bridge.) The first battle went quickly due to the Explorator scouring a ridiculous success after having been rolling crap (he had failed even the routine Tech-Use Checks) all night; he had rolled a seven and I ruled that the number of degrees of success (his int score was pretty even to Nathin's) had allowed him to reduce the rounds he needed to get the bridge portal open by one.

Afterwards they found Erart; practically stumbled upon him and after a frantic interrogation he lead them to the lower decks. Again Trask seized the moment once they found the other survivors of the mutiny and struck a deal to take them back to civilization once they helped him take back the ship. I short of rushed through the scene with the core cognitor since we were near the end, we started late, and there was a time we agreed on ending the game that was creeping up soon. The battle was short, brutal, and fairly climatic despite me subtly hinting that taking out Orwen would end the fight. In the end it was Nathin, Arsenal, and Trask who finished him; each doing horrific damage to the unarmored Navigator ghoul (which is probably my only complaint with the adventure, Orwen felt like he should be tougher then that.)

The party was awarded the 500 XP and managed (albeit barely in the case of one +2) to get the full +19 Profit score. In the end, we all had a blast although I don't think anyone knows what we have planned for next session. Maybe Dark Frontier?

Edit: I feel it's worth noting that I was the only 40k geek playing this session; everyone else is completely new to the setting.