#witcher rpg

Finished my first adventure in what I hope will be a long-term Dark Heresy game. Went well enough, I’d say! Took about three solid sessions to really get to the nitty-gritty of the adventure, which for my play-groups is an unusually long amount of time. It’s new folks, some goons I found through a dude I work with. The first two sessions with them were... cringy, to say the least, but I think they are mellowing out. This third session we had was incredibly fun, and I’m hoping that keeps up! 

The story had been simple enough; a noblewoman’s home was haunted by the tainted Warp echo of a long-lost xenos species who practiced warp-craft. Mining on the mansion’s estate woke alien technologies that tainted the land with poltergeist activity, that went so far as to drain multiple servants of their life essence near instantly. Sprinkled that adventure with a big bad in the form of a Cold Trader who was behind the mining operation, and little hints and haunts pointing towards a much larger campaign to come.

With that first adventure done, the Dark Heresy group will be taking a break from Dark Heresy to help me beta test a game from a podcast. That’ll be “Space Kings,” a sci-fi comedy RPG that uses an average deck of playing cards instead of dice. In that, I’ll be doing a heist adventure, where the party must infiltrate the Cosmic Vatican and get out without getting gunned down by the Swiss Guard, or the dreaded Joan Troopers. It’ll only be a one-shot, but still, it should be a darn good time. Once it’s over it’ll be back to Dark Heresy for that group. 

Now, with my usual roleplay gang, I had been running 7th Sea, but y’all, that had to stop. Not 7th Sea’s fault, mind you, but a social issue ended up ruining the game for pretty much everyone. We haven’t played since New Years and after talking to everyone about it, we decided it was best to just start a new game, free of the folks who caused the problem. Sounds mean, maybe, but homie you weren’t there. Sometimes you gotta throw a project in the trash to get away from a trash person, ya dig? 

For this group, I’m going to switch from 7th Sea to the Witcher RPG, and this weekend will be our first big meetup for it. Gonna make characters and get into the nitty-gritty of the rules of the game by running a quick little demo-adventure. They’ll fight something small, like ghouls or drowners, and do a few talking scenes just so we can test out the system. If you’re unfamiliar with the system, it’s fairly similar to the D20 system but uses D10s instead. Stat + Skill + Die Roll vs. Difficulty Number = Pass/Fail. However, it doesn’t feel nearly as limiting as D20 does for me, and I gotta say, I really enjoy how damned video-gamey it is. It has rules for light attacks and heavy attacks, for pete’s sake. 

Writing the darned thing is also one of the easier times I’ve had in my fifteen-or-so years of GMing. The world of the Witcher is so gamey in concept already, that I barely have to do any work! Bounty boards are quick and fun, and any sort of conflict that happens in a town or village is pretty much prewritten for me. The huge war going on, the intense racism of the North, the amount of crime in the setting, shitty nobles, curses, and the unrest of peasantry are all things I can quickly draw from and make a fast-cast of NPCs littering a place. 

The only issues I’m having with the core of the Witcher RPG are, well, it could use way more monsters. I’m not super familiar with the rules just yet. Have a good idea of how it all works, but not enough so that I feel I can craft my own critters. In time that’ll come, but I found the bestiary section a bit sparse. I know that is because there will be a bestiary book coming sometime this year, but still, I felt the core beasts were a little light in content. That, and I think it can be a bit Northern biased. The books and the games show a lot of the Northern kingdoms, but you know what’s way cooler than the North? Nilfgaard. They’re a lot less racist for one, and two, it would be so, so interesting to see how the vassal states are being governed after the invasions that conquered them. Both of the prewritten adventures assume Nilfgaard to be the big evil bad guys, but hey, at least they won’t burn elves and dwarves in the street for simply being non-human. 

I have rewritten those two starting adventures to be more neutral. I’d rather my players make the decision on who they’re supporting in the war for themselves, and not forced to because the book assumes whatever it assumes. Instead of “fleeing Nilfgaard,” it’s “fleeing the war,” for instance. I will not let my biases dictate who they support either, but I will sure as hell, not sugar coat how shitty the Northern kingdoms are when it comes to their superstition and racism. Nor will I sugar coat Nilfgaard and it’s conquests, slavery, and all its evils. Generally, my hope is they stay as neutral as possible if I can present both sides as god-awful in some respects, and not so bad in others. 

Surprise, surprise! I’m getting obsessed with The Witcher, yet another fantasy game/book series. And you know what that means: more OCs 😂

Introducing: Lysander of...Everywhere, I guess, and Nessa of Lyria. The classic combo of the traveling Witcher/Bard duo.