I can't for the love of the emperor seem to get a grip on how the location of the landing platform looks like.

80m across with a platform in the middle, 20m high. how the hell do the people get up there, or get "pushed back" up there? why is there a 20m high thing-a-ma-bob there? where is the monorail that connects the platforms? this all makes no sense. I guess I can just scrap the 20m platform, but that's just the easy way out, isn't it?

vogue69 said:

Ha! So I am not the only one. FWIW, I am going to run the final part of OE tomorrow night and it doesn't make any sense either (check out the Spore Cannon).

Tbh? Don't stick to the thing like glue. Make up your own landing platform, surround it with enough rubble for cover and destroyed buildings, as well as destroyed remains of a chain-link fence and destroyed vehicles, corpses, etc.

One word of advice - make the platform a) of heavy-duty Imperial guard origin, explaining why she survived the heavy fighting intact and b) make access to the platform just as sturdy. The players will be tempted to withdraw to the platform and easily destory all access in order to prevent any nids from reaching melee combat.

We want to maintain that threat however for dramatic purposes. What I did was have lead broad stairs (about 120 degree of the platforms diameter) lead up to the platform (and reduce the height of the platform). These stairs are of the same heavy duty material and designed to withstand heavy bombardment so nothing that the players have can damage it significantly. My rationale was that the imperial guard installed it and the mag-rail (which was quick rig mag-rail turned into a permanent fixture). Heh, I conveyed to my group's Techmarine more or less subtly that the machine spirit of it was not in a good shape and a bit crude also. He never figured out the reason behind it.

In short, best to do your own intepretation. It's going to be a long combat and the players will sense that they will get saved immediately. In retrospect I should have put more work into scaring them that they will not be able to hold out long enough for 2 or 3 players to burn fate.

Although I did put on a nice show: in my way of running it they couldn't locate the surviving platform at first because it was slightly outside of the commercial spaceport and the stormtroopers where flying low. I also let one or two of the bigger mycetic spores crash nearby, unleashing giant nids in the neighborhood.
Anyway Captain Grayson was asking for directions somewhere around round 3 or so and a round later or two the squad leader saw a beam of sunlight breaking through the spore cloud and reflecting from the metallic crown of a giant heavily damaged statue of an unidentified saint. Since the statue was higher than all nearby buildings, that was the point of reference. (I just love these transcendental, auspicious, quasi-religion events.)

Like I said, it was a long slog and the only thing I did wrong was to not reflect longer on how to really put some scare into the player's hearts here of not being able to hold on long enough.

Alex

ak-73 said:

There are at least three of us that apparently read that and just went 'what the hell?'

I created a octagonal area in the port with the 80m wide area. In the center, I put the 20m high landing platform, which I made roughly 30m across, and roughly circular. To get up to the platform I had a personelle elevator (broken), a cargo lift (also broken), and a broad reinforced staircase much like the one AK describes. I had the mag rail line elevated, and connect to the main landing platform

To the NW I had the main avenue of entry as well as the mag rail line. I created a little train depot on the northern edge of the raised landing platform for the trains to offload cargo (when they worked)

To the west there was a small, meandering road that trundled off into the rest of the city.

To the Southeast, there was a road/pathway that connected to smilar but smaller landing areas, only 50m across with a 15-20m wide and totally destroyed platforms.

yeah I'm going to describe it the same way. broad stairways etc. don't know why I didn't thought of that.

**** we have to start playing selfwritten missions. those pre-generated ones just lack the heart.

vogue69 said:

I won't complain, it's a for free mission (you just need to work hard to make it work and put some role-playing into it). Shadow of Madness was disappointing, I have my hopes pinned onto The Emperor Protects.

Alex

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www.forgeworld.co.uk/Warhammer-40000/Warhammer_40,000_Terrain/PHAETON-PATTERN-LANDING-PAD-CLASS-3.html

ak-73 said:

Agreed here- as a free adventure (or as a developer written one in general) I found it to be pretty good in most areas save or RP direction. They had a handful of opportunities, but most of those were single sentence suggestions like "There is an opportunity for roleplaying with Elsharna here." And EVERY encounter in the game involved someone getting shot at some point.

TEP has several encounters, at least in the first mission (still haven't read the rest of it) that aren't combat- from the mission briefing at the watch fortress to the trip to Aurum on the ship (though most of that is 'here are some characters, do with them what you will' which seems to work there), to encountering and exploring the city when you first arrive, to the meeting with the leader, to exploring (potentially stealthfully), etc. You CAN turn everything into a shooting match, and there are also opportunities for some 'surprise' encounters in places as well, to help keep characters on their toes and toss in some action during the early stages. Overall I like it quite a bit, though some of the heavy lifting (as is often the case) of the RP is ultimately in the GM's hands.

Charmander said:

It's 4:30 am here, just wrapped up OE. It was fun. Though I have to say the fun part was the little stuff that I added to the mission. When in the final battle, Brother Lucian (the Apothecary, played as NPC) finally feel to a horde of hormagaunts, the last words he said to the Ultra squad leader was "...you must be steel... you must be doom."

Among the Stormtroopers there was a short, stout fellow with a full beard. The DA Librarian noticed this and actually began to wonder if he wasn't an abhuman of a certain nearly extinct type which one may no longer talk about.

Staging also matters: when the kill-team reached the digestive tracts I didn't read the text suggested, no. Instead I let the first Brother stop in amazement, then the next until they all stopped and stood in awe. When the players asked me what caused the reaction my response was "You see a huge mountain of tyranids. Millions of tyrannids." (Jaws drop. Cut-away to some late-come players whose PCs were fighting inside the Imperial Ship. After a fight scene inside the ship, cut back to the amazed kill-team.) "Your eyes wander over the scene, your brain unable to comprehend. But there is more, you just don't see a mountain of tyranids. You see towers and laser batteries, etc." I went then on to describe the full scene of the imperial frigate stuck half-way in the digestive acid.
That scene worked well.

I also had that scene where one of the stormtroopers lay dying. I actually didn't have to say anything, the ultra kill-team leader took off his helmet and bent over him and when the stormtrooper tried to reach out for his face, he took his bloody hand and put it to his face. Gave the PC a temporary fate point for that.

So worked well, much better than the previous sessions.

Morale of the story: as a GM you need to create some smaller stuff to liven up the missions, else it becomes boring quickly. I also did notify the players at the start of the game that DW was combat-oriented and sometimes can lack RP elements a bit and that I as a GM would work more stuff into the missions and that the players also need to work a bit more at it, talking to each other more in character and all to overcome the too heavy combat-orientation. They understood the need for that and it worked out tonight.

Thus our playing until well past midnight. :-)

Bedtime right about now though, mission report over.

Alex

ak-73 said:

Glad it went well- nice to hear a story about a GM with a group of players that work with him as well!