Hi all - I've lurked on this forum for too long, its time to step up.

I've had the Grimm book for about 4 months now and I just keep coming back to it to read but I've decided that I want to run a campaign in this fantastic setting. Now as i'm an experienced GM i've little fear as far as running the game goes but I do have a few questions specific to the Grimm system.

1) What is the ideal number of PC's? (I ask this as team work it pretty vital)

2) What sort of life-span does a Grimm campaign have (our Dark Heresy Campaign is currently at about 18 months and still going)

and.

3) How big a part do keepsakes and Magic play in Grimm.

Once I've got a group together I'll start posting some of our feedback.

Thanks

Surak

Woooo a new face

1) Hmm, well theres many workarounds for playing with 1 or 2 PC's, and a lot of drawbacks to 6+ PC's. Generally for most PnP games, 4 or so seems to be the ideal number. I started with just me and a friend playing together, where he just played 2 characters (bully and dreamer). If I get another player (which I'm anticipating will be soon), then they'd probably create another character or 2 to fill in what's lacking.

2) Ummm that could vary tremendously. Perhaps you modify the Three "Little" Pigs adventure to be more fitting for a 3rd grader, or you could even start them at 5th or so grade, and pull off a one shot where the kids overhear the guards and royal officials of a small city talking about the king's scouts going missing in the World's Edge Mountains while you're creeping through the sewers. They decide to check it out and find various traps along a well traveled path only to find a brick house and 3 fat pigs waiting on the other side. The campaign is over when they kill the mighty wolf and free the pigs, and they share their secrets on the way home. OR, as the book suggests, you decide to make the kids' objective to defeat the Rotten King and end his reign. This could take a similarly long time as your Dark Heresy campaign as there are SEVERAL adventures that could be used from the book, perhaps every 2 adventures they graduate. The time is easily at the narrator's discretion, trust me when I say this - brainstorm brainstorm brainstorm ! I made the most amature and embaressing mistake with my first GM attempt and only planned one house, and only thought out a linear chain of events. The just walked out the front door and avoided everything I thought up and left me dumbfounded. Running an 18 month campaign, I'm sure you know all those, but think on the broad and general scale and get more specific where you find necessary.

3) From my experience: A lot and a little, respectively.

• My player's keepsakes are the baseball bat and the magic marker. Although I have modified the rules on them a bit for roleplaying's sake - the bat doesn't require imagination to use for a ranged attack, the bully was the star slugger of his little league team and knew how to use it...why does he need imagination (he can expend muscle to increase damage though) and the dreamer's wild imagination makes it almost natural to be able to draw simple doors though foot thick walls without imagination (at the most), she can expend imagination to increase its capabilities through thicker objects and walls eventually creating portals (full imagination required....i know it breaks the rules) - keepsakes are in constant use in my party, from impressing villagers with even just the simple writing ability of the marker, let alone the door factor, threating corrupted gnomes to comply to the bully's demands with the aid of his bat, there are tons of uses.
• For magic, I've really only used it twice, the players haven't gotten to touch it. The dreamer is headed towards the magic path, but not their quite yet. Basically they have a wishing rock that they promised to return to its quarry and in return he keeps up the "Fortune" (guardian 1st circle spell) spell on the kids as long as they don't deviate from the path. If they do deviate, it just gets frustrated and removes the spell, waiting to recast it once they're on track again. The second time I used a spell was a sort if combo. The bully got "cursed" with a Charm spell (Enchanter first 1st-circle), but after using it's effects with a cool test, the spell then wore off and switched to Blemish (2nd-circle Witch spell). This was quite humorous because this was implemented while trying to swoon the Queen of Tin & Spices. Just as he thought he succeeded his face began to melt, break out, and contort cause the Queen to freak and he failed the test. But there are several chances later on in the game for players to be able to break out the wand and start spewing "Abra Kadabra".

Btw, I checked out your posts in the Dark Heresy forums...and my god do you provide a lot of input. If we get the same kind of treatment I can't wait.

If you use the internet to run your game, let me jump in line to play. I'm wanting to play sooooo bad.

I pretty much agree with all that LM said.

1) I think 3-5 is going to be good to make a balanced group.

2) You know, how long it will last is like any RPG - do you want a few one-shots or do you want a campaign. A campaign is definitely possible, as the kids are supposed to work themselves from 3rd grade to 12th in their adventures. that can take as little or as long as you like.

3) My players use their Keepsakes constantly - a backpack that will hold anything (currently broken) for the Jock, a journal that sometimes writes hints or clues for the Dreamer, the Bully's baseball cap that turns solid steel and can be thrown as a weapon, and a small cloak that renders the Outcast invisible but is too small to cover all of him at once unless he curls into a ball.

magic has also only played a small part in my campaign so far. With the Dreamer's imagination abilities, which basicly allow her to alter reality, there seems to be more than enough magic in the party. They have encountered residents that have had some limited magical ability - such as elves that created potions for them once they gathered the ingredients. Perhaps i will consider having them get the opportunity to apprentice to a resident that can teach them actual magic much later in the campaign, but for the moment its enough to deal with what they have.

Thanks for the feedback people,

I'm glad Grimm seems to have as much life in it as I had hoped, as a group we tend to like getting deep into the setting so short campaigns don't really fit the bill.

At the moment we have only run one test session of Grimm, which revolved around actually getting the group into the grimm lands and took most of the evening as everyoe was having too much fun getting into character at school (whoever thought that a group of 20 somethings could spend 4 hours roleplaying through a day of primary school was a genius).

Once I get a stable campaign going I'll probably start posting a log and GM related stuff on the forums like I do for Dark Heresy.

Either way I shall keep posting as I think of stuff.

Surak

Ok there's a fairly difficult choice coming for our RP group and I wanted a little input from you guys and girls.

As some of you know i'm currently running a DH campaign that has been running for close to 2 years. We are starting to reach the natural end of the campaign (i'm guessing by xmas at the current rate of play) and i've started looking to what rp to replace DH with.

And here comes the question.

Our DH group at the moment currently numbers 9, with three others that have recently expressed interest. Can Grimm coupe with a long-term campaign with this many players. Splitting the group isn't an option in this case as we are all far too busy for our own good.

Thanks

Surak

If you have been able to do it with DH, I think it will be more than viable with Grimm. Right now I'm playing with me as narrator and 2 other players. Considering teamwork is a huge focus of Grimm, it opens many windows, and the imagination aspect just benefits from more people. More people = more ideas. More ideas = cooler story. After all, Grimm a storytelling system, so it's less focused on the hacking and slashing and more focused on HOW you're hacking and slashing, if you get the analogy there. The only problem I could see arising is keeping it under control, but after 2 years I get the feeling you've got that down to a formula. With the way Grimm works especially it also allows you to look at your various players and go "What could I add to this adventure to give him the spotlight?" to help develop your adventure. So I say go for it, sounds like it'd be an awesome adventure. You could have an entire baseball team of Jocks, or gang of Bullies, math team of Nerds, or maybe the cheerleading squad of popular kids! Because I'm such a lenient narrator, always giving players bonuses for being creative, I could see so much fun story-wise with that many players. A pair of identical outcasts that get a +1 bonus to cool when using teamwork with each other exclusively to lie, cheat, or steal their way past an encounter. Three normal kids that first met in the Grimm lands only to find out later that they're last remaining Knights of the Round table, and the true heir to Camelot (which could be in turmoil). Loooots of options! I hope this helps.

Thanks for the feed back LM, from what you say we should be well suited to this game as a group.

now to convince them to ditch there bolters and get in touch with there inner child, shouldn't be that hard for a few of them

Surak

Surak said:

Yeah this was hard for me to do as a narrator even. The only roleplaying I'd done prior to grimm was D&D and the WoW rpg, both hack and slash style, so I wasn't really sure how to think outside of that mindset when designing my first adventure. So they kind of had two trips: one to the Castle of Snakes page 143 or so, and the other to an underground cellar in the castle of Tin and Spices that had been taken over by corrupted gnomes that needed to be exterminated. The fighting in both wasn't brutal, the Castle of Snakes were more like puzzles for how they'd defeat their enemies (I added a twist to each room of enemies) and the cellar gnomes were defeated by snapping their suspenders causing them to burst into purple smoke as the book describes. From there I've tried to keep fighting to a minimum but always creeps back up. If you find a way around this "hack and slash" mindset and how to brainstorm various ideas, I'd love to hear how you do it....from anyone.

There is always deathwatch if you want to have a group of 9 space marines go Halo...

Grimm even though its suppose to be "inner child" doesnt have to be. We are in essence talking about the dark side of fairy tales... where one could say "Hansel and Gretel escapes the which by killing her, they in fact entice the witch to kill the parents. When the players meet Hansel and Gretel for the first time they them selves can be coaxed into believing that they are being held by the witch instead. The player then defeat the witch much to their surprise only to find out that Hansel and Gretel have disappeared with no tracks as to where they have gone... a player then finds a chest revealing a little red riding hood.... and off into the distance the howling of wolves can be heard..."

I dont know, I really enjoyed the Grimm RPG because of how cleverly sinister (more so in some cases) some of the old school fairy tales can become. Im actually exited to play this