This may be a confession of sorts. This was prompted by the review of PtU which touched on a few of the concerns I had having run this particular scenario. In short BH did not go the way the designers intended and I am still in two (possible even four) minds as to whether it got derailed due the inherent flaws in the structure of the scenario or my own ineptness, and whether my hasty rejigging of the plot was some deft GM foot-work or a half-assed repair job that will come back to haunt the greater campaign.

I offer the abridged facts of the case and my own thougts to the forum possibley in an effort to salve my conscience but mostly for input as to future issues that may crop up due to my "handling" of the scenario. Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.

The PCs maintain a profesional but cordial relationship with Ulbrexis and the Proctor. Whilst initially causing some distress with local arbites when discussing "possible" solutions to the problem (asassination of local nobility to make clearing the mines easier) they also make it clear that they "put all options on the table first" and that "prevention of continued disturbance to Imperial industry" is the main goal. A few raised eyebrows but as you will later see some of the acolytes in my campaign are "committed" inqusitorial representatives.

They question the arbites, the locals, ulbrexis, slaves (some impressive oratory by the priest garnered their respect) and crucially made all their forbiddden lore and psynscience rolls with extra grades of success. I also ran a futher encounter when, having spoken with Olion, they investigated trans orbital ore shipping and got alittle fruther with establishing the Morrir "may have had offworld contacts but its been quiet for sometime now" with inferences that relations between Morrir and these "contacts" had inexplicably soured. In truth this is where it probably went wrong, although I didnt spot it. The pcs had a good pciture of what was happening, could reasonablely predict where Morrir would strike, and then they proceeded to plan an ambush.

Next scene. This is where the pcs supposedly get to encounter a bomb going off, escape with their lives and plan/recuperate for the final encounter. In short the results of this scene should be: Morrir is free, a bomb goes off - anything esle is incidental.

Heres how it actually panned out. Having negotiated with the Proctor that he would guard one potential hot spot with his arbites, another guarded by Olion and his bunch and the pcs a third. This was my way of rewarding the players for some sharp investigative work. They had all the information I could give them and split the resources at their disposal appropriately. I gave them a one in three chance that they would be at the actual scene of the crime. As it happened I rolled randomly and they got lucky. Afterall, I thought, it makes little difference when/where they appear as it is a forgone conclusion.

Cue absolute carnage. The party had split itself across three levels. Ulbrexis and a sniper up top. Tech preist and psyker in the middle and scum and preist down the bottom. The players had quite deliberately set up a killing ground. The first wave of mutants appeared, with Throgel and Raze up front along with Morrir and bomb carrier at the back. Group of ten in total. Sniper pops the head off Raze immediately and 5 mutants go down due to a hail of automatic gun fire from the other members of the team. GM thinks he should up the number of back up mutants to make this encounter harder. 10 more appear with another 10 or so behind (that should cover it thinks I!). Ulbrexis identifies Morrir and the sniper makes some atstonishing rolls to cap all the bomb carriers so Morrir is left holding it. Some signes of stress by the pcs as Morrirs invunerabilty dawns on them. More mutants die and crucially Throgel never gets to make an impact. The psyker rolls perils of the warp three times and gets the same result three times, Earthshake. With his low AG he is routinely picking himself up off the floor. The pskyer seeing gunfire is proving mostly ineffective to Throgel who is attempting to get in between the pcs and Morrir (hastily setting up the bomb) rushes in headless of her own life and then guts him (Throgel) with a psi-blade. Morrir plants the bomb. The scenario was going well for the pcs but this should have turned the tables.

However I hadnt counted on how "commmitted" the preist was. On seeing that the bomb had been set the players started to evacuate. They knew what the bomb was capable of and moved with all due alacrity. With the expection of the preist who had been manfully battling to get closer to Morrir and stop him setting off the bomb. Rather than run away he ran towards the bomb, picked it up, radioed to his team members that he loved the Emperor and wished them well before running with the bomb after Morrir. GM struggling with possibilities here. My assesment of the sitaution was that the pc was probably dead with no repreive for fate points. Having him spend a fate point and coming back I thought would just be tacky. Equally Morrir had to live....but the bomb was absolutely lethal. Its twists ordinary space so it had to have "some" affect on Morrir. The problem I had was that the preist would easily catch up with Morrir. He just could phsyically run faster than him.

In the end I just did a bodge job and hoped for the best. Morrir runs through one of the "warp tunnels" that enable him to carry out these attacks. On the other side is a further two and Morrir disappears into one of them. The priest in hot pursuit (taking corruption points and insanity all the way but maintaining the willpower rolls to keep his legs running) find these two exits and declares his intention to just lob the bomb after Morrir. I give him a 50/50 shot at picking the right door and he gets it.

Gm is now left with a quandry indeed. I can see the writing on the wall at this stage. The scenario is dead. The conflicts I had to resolve are that I had to reward player commitment but still maintain some semblance of plot. If Morrir had merely escaped unscathed I think that would have been unfair. The Broken chains were effectively dead at this point. The zombies just wouldnt be raised without the final encounter. The PCs had stopped any loss of life by ensuring almost no slaves had died and the bomb had not gone off in the right place.

So heres how I finished it:

A large section of the mine 2 miles away collapses due to an underground explosion. The preist ditches a fate point and is blown clear through the door way and lives. Remaining mutants are butchered by the other acolytes. "Righteous fury" galore. Acolytes investigate the site of the underground explosion and after some digging find "bits" of Morrir splattered across a wide area.....all still alive! The cut out his (stll swearing and cursing their lives in the names of the ruinous powers) head and seal it in a box and dynamite the rest. I thought the chaos gods laughing at stilll mainting their side of the dark pact was pretty amusing and the head in a box had shades of "Pontius Glaw"about it. Globus Varrack arrives takes charge of the box and crucially does not kill Ulbrexis. Ulbrexis is left on the planet with the Inquistion seeming to live up to their part of the original bargain.

Finally my reasons for these decisions are: I couldnt in all conscience punish the plyers for a)putting their characters on the line, 2)rolling well, 3)having a good plan. Morrir had to live but stil suffer. Ulbrexis also therefore had to live otherwise future use of Morrir would get ridiculous. No zombies, no dark ritual, a whole lot less disruption to the tithe than anticipated and the grudging respect of the =][= and the arbites for the pcs doing what they were asked and putting their asses on the line.

so...thoughts? comments? did I do bad?

Well, maybe it's just me but it sounds like you did fantastic and brought out a great, meaningful and well thought out ending to a pigs ear of an adventure.

Personally, have read through Baron Hopes at the store, I absolutely despised the ending. The whole zombie apocolypse thing was just tacked on and kind pointless. Also killing the Baron at the end, while in character for the Imperium, twisted my stomach... a total betrayal of the guy the adventure actively encourages and rewards the PCs for befriending and it's only given one quick sentence in the text. (OK, so my sympathies are with the Baron... I'm a heretic... come and purge me, I dare yeh).

Instead, you resolved the adventure neatly, rewarded the PCs for there actions and left two great hooks for future plot development (the head in the box and the Baron alive, well and no doubt up to his old tricks). You could do amazing things with that. It's so cool.

I don't know what you're so worried about. Your PCs went out of their way and risked life and limb to be extra-awsome and you rewarded them for it. You might even point out to them that because of their dedication they avoided a zombie apocalypse and saved countless lives (I know my PCs love it whenever they disrupt my best laid plans).

If one of my PCs grabbed a reality rending bomb and charged after the BBEG that would end him permenantly no rolls required.

I have to agree with Lucius here. Your players acted with intelligence and bravery, and they got lucky. You in turn rewarded them for it, as you should have.

And you now have a talking head in a box, along with Ulbrexis still alive to continue his work ... tons of potential for future adventure.

I only wish my fellow players and I had been that smart when we went through Baron Hopes.

If I remember correctly the way that such an event is suppose to be prevented is that as soon as the bomb is set it suppose to instantly faze into the ground. It's been a while, but I think that's how it's written in the book. But, regardless you did a good job winging it with the situation you found yourself in.

Ordo Hydra said:

Actually you're a bit braver than me, I ran the other two adventures out of that which I had to modify extremely heavily just to get them to work properly with the group, had a great time running and people enjoyed them. The last one I dunno what to do with, we had a couple of prior games with zombies in it and I really wasnt in the mood to run a 3rd where 'oh gee, the dead are walking again' and everyone finds an excuse to drag out flamers... again. That in combination with all kinds of recent movie/computer game cheesiness, gets pretty weary.

If I run 'something' based off this particular adventure it'll involve no zombies, the living and something far more sinister in the way of mind controlling a population. I think if I ran it straight-up as it is written they'd all die, so in saying that yours managed to avert that I think its worth a couple of fate points.

MKX said:

Flamers and zombies?! Isn't tat just a bad idea all around? The last time my players tried that, all they ended up with was walking grappling balls of fire. Not exactly pleasant... That's one thing folks tend to forget about Zombie Hoards, their strength (and main combat technique for that matter) is the Grapple.

To the OP: as others have said, dear gods man, there's noting wrong and everything right with altering a story to match players being on the ball and creative! That is to be praised and is most defiantly a mark of a good damned GM!

Well thanks for the words of support guys! it means alot. Just got vaguely paranoid that I had missed something or "rogered" any scenarios that spring up from my hasty rejigging of BH.

Cheers all

Sounds like a decent "save" to me. As a bonus, since you are clearly familiar with the Eisenhorn series (Pontius Glau reference) is that you now have the basis for a followup mission once enough time has passed for it to be a fun surprise. Have the "head in a box" stolen from Inquisitional vaults by "parties unknown" (possibly Inquisitor Rathbone or Soldevan if you are feeling particularly devious) and well... He does so HATE the Baron... Chaos literally ensues! Now that he lacks a physical body our mutie-heretic has made further deals with his dark patron and has bartered for some "special gifts" (be creative, but psychic powers or possibly even making him a Demonhost are obvious options). You could even borrow a cheesy classic sci-fi cleche and have his head (now out of the hated warded box) floating in a clear armourplas jar filled with bubbling fluids, big thick cables and wires, etc... Now mount the jar on some custom-built servitor body or even an extensively modified Sentinel walker (probably the utility/lifter variant so he has "forklift hands"). Add a MIU link so he can actually control the new "body" and away you go....

Bonus follow up mission: Who the hell provided this guy with a MIU and HereTek body? Also, who the hell steals a living sealed head from the Inquisition and HOW?!

Oh no what did you do! Step off the railroad track and let the PCs actually decide the adventure through daring and bright ideas? Heresy!

Nah I'm just kidding that sounded awesome. My players also "botched" the adventure thanks to a certain blood-flamer with the blood of Baron Ulbrexis' secret heir... preventing the zombie apocalypse.

I did have them waste Ulbrexis though - it's the ultimate symbol of how ****** up the Inquisition is. Of course the players didn't believe the deal for a second, and neither did Ulbrexis himself - it was sorta given. I mean take a dangerous Heretic and him as the new King? Yeah, right! Maybe if they were working for a Radical....

Graver said:

Heavy flamer, I made the 1st mistake of trying to kill them with it (**** fate points) and the 2nd mistake of not having it destroyed in the process of killing the gang heavy lugging it around, it pretty much killed everything on the first blast storyline tearing of fury and anything else that lives through that tends to take 10 steps and die miserably from the dodgy on-fire rules. But its gone now so human wave tactics of blitzed druggie cultists work again... praise Slaanesh, lets grapple....

Graver said:

Almost as bad as when I used to play the original HALO. "We're gonna get you used to wanting to use plasma grenades because they are sticky. And then we're gonna introduce you to the flood." Plasmas with the so-called "popcorn" was just asking for it to go off in your own face. Nothing quite so irritatingly entertaining as lobbing a "blue pulsating spider" and seeing it hit one of those little guys who is in mid air heading for your face.

To the OP: You did well for your self over all. Feel good in that.

-=Brother Praetus=-