Misc. NPC Talents (Warhammer Cards I Forgot To Blog, Part 3)

Here's more Talent cards intended for NPCs in Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 3rd Edition. As with the Social Talents I posted the other day, it's my intent that you apply no more than 2 of these to any given NPC, in the same way that most PCs have only 2 Talent Slots. Nemeses, Organization, and Monster Group cards may provide additional Slots for special encounters, but don't go overboard or it'll just complicate your game.

I made these a long time ago, so I don't have a lot to say about them. Some are intended for ordinary human NPCs, but others would only make sense on monsters or at least followers of the Ruinous Powers.  Some of them are just shorthand ways of simplifying the game (such as abstracting equipment details or entire bodyguards down into a single card), while others provide new powers that can't really be acquired in any other way. Some of them have seen extensive playtesting, but there's at least a few here that I never used. Feel free to print them out for your own Warhammer gaming, and please let me know if you find them useful.

NPC Social Talents (Warhammer Cards I Forgot To Blog, Part 2)

Here's a big batch of Social Talent Cards for NPCs in Warhammer Fantasy 3rd Edition.

NPCs don't typically have Talent Slots in the game. Some of the Organization and Nemesis cards do, but I don't recommend restricting yourself (as GM) to only those frameworks. Adding one NPC Social Talent to any given NPC won't break anything, and will feel about on par with the Talent options that PCs have. NPCs that are meant to be a major social obstacle, such as jaded nobles, might have 2 or even 3 Social Talents, but this should be fairly rare just to keep it in line with the limitations players face re: Talents.

These cards are intended to "spice up" Social Encounters in Warhammer 3rd, helping to bring a little depth and variation to your social conflicts. Feel free to print these for your personal use, and please let me know if you find them helpful.

 

 

 

 

Several of those cards alter the difficulty of certain social skill rolls, such as the one that raises the difficulty of Charm and Guile while simultaneously lowering the difficulty of Leadership checks. The idea there is to mix things up a bit so the PCs can't just rely on a single skill for every situation. When I ran these, I tended to keep the cards hidden because as GM I like to be mysterious. In retrospect, though, it's probably better to point those cards out to the PCs early in the scene, to encourage them to swap tactics. Otherwise, you'll find the same high-Fellowship character attempting to power through using the same Skill again and again, and they'll completely miss your attempt at adding depth to the scene. My recommendation now is that you read the card out loud to the players the first time (in any scene) where the card is modifying a die roll. Preserving a sense of mystery is all well and good, but you need to give the players enough data for them to make meaningful decisions at least starting with the second attempt to influence any given NPC.

Some of the Talents are designed to slow down Social Encounters or discourage the PCs from ganging up en masse and overwhelming the NPCs by sheer volume of low-quality die rolls. Those are especially good cards to use if there's only one NPC in a scene, as otherwise the rules as written favor the brute-force approach to group Charm checks.

The cards above were made with the Strange Eons program. I've got a few dozen more (non-Social) NPC Talents sitting around on my hard drive, and hopefully I'll find time to post them soon. Of course, I said the same thing about these Social Talents way back in February, so who knows how long it will take me to get around to it.

Highlights from Emerald City Comic Con

I went to the Emerald City Comic Con last weekend.  My wife joined me on Friday, but due to illness she had to skip out on the other two days of the con (and three days of work after that). Cons are better when you've got a friend to gawk with, but I still had a lot of fun despite being on my own for the weekend.

I ran two sessions of Psi*Run for the Games On Demand / Story Game Seattle booth. The first was a little disjointed and didn't really come together until the third hour of play. That happens sometimes with the game, due to its highly improvisational nature. The second session found its footing immediately, and just took off. One of the players posted "playing my new favorite RPG, Psi*Run" to her Facebook page. So that's definitely a success. Both games were over-the-top crazy, but I suspect the first group might have enjoyed it a little more if I'd reigned in the zaniness a bit early on and given them a more coherent faction of Chasers.

While at the con, I made frequent visits to the Flying Frog Productions booth. The Frog continues to impress me with their customer service, friendliness, and with the immense fun their games provide. They told me a lot of what's coming up in future Brimstone expansions, which deserves a post of its own here sometime soon. Now that I'm not nursing my wife back to health, I should be able to find time to type that up.


Other purchases I made last weekend included:

• 4 expansion decks for Shadows of Brimstone, including much-needed new artifact cards for Targa and Jargono and some more blanks just in case we burn through those in a hurry too.
• 2 expansion decks for Fortune and Glory.
• A die-rolling tray to reduce dice-related clutter when playing big board games. I've had one for years, and decided it would be useful to get a second one.
• Two expansion decks for Super Fight that add Locations and Scenarios to provide some context for the ridiculous battles in the game.
• A handful of custom Lego minifigs and accessory pieces. I have plans to use these in an RPG I'm running called BrickerWorld.
• An album by local nerd-rock group Kirby Krackle. Got it signed by the song-writer.
• The goofy godzillesque board game Terror In Meeple City.
• Crazy game and science themed nail art (for my wife) from Espionage Cosmetics. She can decorate her fingers in nebulas and dice.
• A gift for an out-of-town friend that I probably can't talk about until it shows up in his mailbox.

Beyond that, I played a few demos, geeked out a lot, and just generally had fun. It was a really good con.




EDIT: Oops, forgot to mention the expansion deck "Curse of the Werewolf" for Dark Gothic. It's a very small expansion, but solid. I had to build an entry for it on Board Game Geek it was so new.