[Damned Cities SPOILERS]!

Heya folks,

I'm back to the forums. Yesterday we've finished our own epic custom campaign which started on June 11, 2010, so next week I am about to start Haarlock's Legacy campaign.

After what I've found here on the forums, the order of play (which is generally agreed upon by the community) is as follows:

DC

D&A

TF

DS

So, after reading the DC, a first big issue arises: why did they so name a location so crucial for the whole plot - the "Haarlock's Folly"? Doesn't it make this tower a number one target for their inquiries right from the start (they do all know that the campagn is called Haarlock's Legacy), thus ruining a big part of the whole intrigue?

Should I come up with a different name for the tower? How did you handle this?

Thanks.

egalor said:

I suggest having this moved to the Gamemaster section.

Hi there,

first, this would be indeed a topic for the GM-Thread

Anway

Renaming it could be become a pain in the ass. After all, you want the people to now that it is about Haarlock. It is the Haarlock Legacy.

My advice: provide the pc with something inside the tower that will reduce the tower (in there eyes) to a "plot hook" and "kick off" for the game.

While I did not run this, I advised under different topics to simply at a room in the cellar which Haarlock used for the summoning of the Daemon and for the constructions of the mirrors. Of course, the tools will all be gone but a "psychic imprint" of the event might still be present. Some carvings in the floor could be left where Haarlock skretched some runes into the ground. Time and dirt covered next to all of them, but the pc will find them. Simply, make it easy for them. The room could now be nothing more but a huge stash-away for...stuff. Unused office furniture and old files nobody cares about any longer.

If the pc get cooky about the Tower, they will investigate it and they will find the room. It is very likely that they will believe that all of the stuff relates to it and that Haarlock summoned something that for some reason is NOW loose on the streets.

Yes, indeed, it should be in the GM section. I'd appreciate if the mods could move it over there...

Gregorius21778

1. A very good point to make it look like a mere kick-off for the game. But the downside is that the PCs will inevitably want to investigate into this tower because of their meta-knowledge of anything related to Haarlock (the PCs don't know anything yet about 'Haarlock' at all). I am really afraid they will focus on the tower, and shortly after - on Skarmen (and I don't want it to happen at all during our first session).

I will try your trick, though.

2. And a good point to make them concentrate on their main enemy outside the tower, thereby leaving Skarmen alone for the time being.

Thanks for the useful advice. Me too, I didn't want to rename the tower.

If you have any additional tips, please let me read.

My players really ingored the tower at first and proceeded to investigate the crime the were called to look at. Namely the grisly occult murders. Strangely though the PC's ignored Fihad Constantine most of the adventure and Skarmen as well. If they hadn't acquired the pieces, Skarmen probably woudl have ignored them too. The big clue of course is the autopsied zombies. My PC's did the 'right thing' though and investigated the Enforcers first rather than the Arbites precint. I love it when my players really buy into the setting

andrewm9 said:

Hmm, interesting. How did they perceive the fact that the campaign is related to the thing named Haarlock and the tower is named Haarlock 's Folly? Didn't it rouse any suspicions?

They might have chosen to compartmentalize meta-game knowledge.

egalor said:

Personally I'd be very disappointed at such meta gaming my friend, both as a GM and as a player. I just finished Baron Hopes from Purge the Unclean with one of the palyers knowing exactly what was going to happen, as he'd read the adventure before we'd even met, but he was excellent in not 'cheating'. Find a way to discourage such distasteful conduct, I'm sure Gregorious will have some great advice, he normally does. (meant in a non sarcastic way!) :-)

I am now running Damned Cities, with next week the third and final session coming up. [spoilerS]

The players knew we were embarking on the Haarlock's Legacy mini-campaign, I used the name Haarlock's Folly, but they showed no particular over-focused interest on the tower. I assume they were very interested in the Haarlock angle to the proceedings as they unfolded, but they thought it would become apparent from the murders they were investigating.

I did, however, hide the connection of the mirror fragments to Haarlock for a long time, until it was the right time. The first time they heard about it was when Lady Amorite's quote "I have a mirror that even old Haarlock was proud to look upon" become known, and then Eupheme Tassel told them her grandfather said the fragments started to circulate among the Sinophia Magna nobility and Undertow after the looting of Haarlock's tower.

Once thát is out, they will double back to the tower, ofcourse. But when you manage to coincide that with the final stage of turmoil in the campaign, with the whole city seething in chaos and riots, there's no problem, as the tower is where the finale will take place.

egalor said:

Some additional material I wrote up & you might find useful. Unfortunately, it is a little scattered ...

http://darkreign40k.com/drjoomla/index.php/gm-tips/tips-for-scenarios/1266-the-early-murders-gm-aid-add-on-for-qdamned-citiesq
[some additional Investigation charts about the "earlier murders"]

http://rapidshare.com/files/367320677/DC_EnfScene_Snitch.pdf
A simple scene where the pc can decide to actually work with the Enforcers

http://rapidshare.com/files/435564197/AddScenes_FriendsOfBalGrey.pdf
Some ideas about the investigation around the "Friends of Bal Grey"

Gregorius21778 said:

Wow, that's a lot of reading until next Thursday.

Really, thank you x 1000 for your help.

From a player perspective, yes, it was quite obvious that Haarlock's Folly was important. We had been investigating Haarlock for some time, and his connection with Sinophia was part of the reason our Inquisitor sent us in the first place! (Damned Cities is the second in the Haarlock series of adventures, by the way - Tattered Fates is first!)

Knowing it was important didn't automatically lead us to think it was related to the murders, though. My psyker was very suspicious of the place and uncomfortable in it, but on discovering that it was built to nullify psychic energy, he settled down and assumed that was why he instinctively disliked it.

Also, because Fihad Constantine was so honest and decent, I have to say the group's attention was deflected from the Arbites. We rather assumed they were all basically like him. That was our mistake!

So, in my opinion, the name of the folly won't lead players anywhere. They'll know it's significant to their overall investigation of Haarlock, but there's no harm in that. The folly itself isn't really the key to the investigation, anyway, in my opinion...

Hi Nivqvah,

thanks for providing a players point of view.

Niqvah said:

*SPOILERS*

I have to been playing through the harlock series and damned cities is my fav so far. Now it has been said in my group that i should be carted off to the black ships, but resoning that anything harlock is bad (having played through the first senario and decided i really want to kill harlock if he still exists) i assumed that the enforcers were dodgy and that the tower needed nuking. Long story straight i had some of the team set up to mitgate the attack on council, had the undertow gangs swear not to go toe to toe with arbites or enforcers and replayed dead nobles with crime lords as for the tower i had enough arbites on side to reduce the danger going back in. Got my seal stright after. The problem with the senario is that if you have played the first one, you are going to assume the folly is evil and by association the people in it may be corrupted. There for any sensible player is going to set up for this, and if your sensible your also going to look at anything that would by association be tainted. The problem is once you go down that track your going to be looking for corruption amoungst the arbites and enforcers.

So the name is a give away, however that is only if you have encountered Harlocks legacy before, however if this is your first the players should be ok as most in my experience don't meta game.

I actually just took over an arc from our GM, as he didn't have the time with work and found myself GMing the Damned Cities arc. We'd already run D&A and Tattered Fates, so the players already knew plenty about Haarlock.

The first thing they did on arrival was nearly get themselves killed in the Barge Assault encounter (My attempts at 'improving' the scenario to be able to entertain 5 level 7 and 8 characters probably didn't help - new GM coming through!) but immediately after that began trying to investigate the tower purely based on it's name.

As we didn't have a psyker, but did have a character who's been possessed twice I gave him the ability to use pynisience as a basic skill. He was immediately wierded out by the tower. However, I then did what any right minded GM would do - I dangled a distraction under their nose, baited with another distraction. On arrival they attempted to bull their way through to see Skarman and investigate the tower, but were met by a polite Constantine who informed them that Skarman was out on business, and that a new body had just been found and they should come and view the scene straight away. When they arrived at the scene (I forget the victim's name) I suggested talking to the neighbors (Revealing some of the rumours in the book) and adding a couple more - about a strange, elite gang forming in the undertow that was armed with very advanced gear. Some of it even (In breathless tones) new . They immediately went to talk to said gang, as our scum has been attempting to get proper gang connections for nearly a year of real life.

By the time they returned, laden down with new wargear and a dubious business deal with a reclaimator and gang lord, who kept giving odd looks at the Assassin leader (Who had rival Logicians, more on that later. The players assumed this was as a result of his hundreds of knives), it was nightfall. I had them allocated space in the Folly's barracks, where they would have had ample opportunity to investigate the tower.

Instead, they immediately headed into town and rented rooms in a hotel in case the gangers saw them communing with The Law, and vice versa. They did not return other than in Phase III, bar once to talk to Constantine.

Lesson learned: When trying to avoid the party doing something, select something they want to do that is entirely unrelated to the plot, and dangle it in front of them. They'll forget about the metagaming instantly.

For those curious, the gang was actually a tie in to the reason why the Arbites were in the Folly in the first place: The Logicians heretek cult. The party has had run ins with them before in a custom campaign, and our usual GM was planning on running more to do with them again later, so it provided a nice tie in.

Suffice to say it led a bit more insanity to the proceedings - including the orbital bombardment of the Folly mere minutes after they smashed the reassembled mirror and left the grounds.

Why would Damned Cities come before Tattered Fates?

BYE

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