Warlock! OOC Discussion

General OOC thread for discussing whatevs needs discussing.

Also, when you arrive, please introduce yourself here!

Hey, all.

First got interested in Warhammer about 18 years ago. I remember wrecking my mother’s head asking to see if the one little newsagents a few towns away had that month’s copy of White Dwarf.

While this isn’t Warhammer, it’s close enough! Hope we have a good game!

Hey gang! Excited to be here! I think I've gamed with most of you in one way or another, and am looking forward to another opportunity!

Hello everyone! I'm also delighted to be here. I'm probably less familiar to all of you, since I haven't had a big presence here on Gamers Plane. As luck would have it, this is my week for an 'Ask Me Anything' thread. If you're at all curious, hit me up over there! Otherwise, I'm sure we'll get to know one another as we play.

Thanks for having me here! I'm Jabes, RPG addict and pastry chef. I ran a cake shop for quite a few years where we made geeky cakes, including these D&D-themed ones:I was introduced to AD&D in 1987 and to this day, I still play Ithough rarely now) with the same group of guys, my best friends. I've been a pretty active member of Gamers' Plane since joining the community in early 2015. Here, I discovered numerous new game systems, and made many new friends along the way. I've gamed with Len, KCC, and cowleyc, but this will be my first Harrigan game! Pleased to "meet" you, Ciriaco!

So I don't really know much about the OSR, and know absolutely nothing about Warhammer. Am just here for the hopefully down and dirty adventuring!

Hey everyone — I should have started the thread with a bit more of a formal introduction myself. I’m Harrigan, crusty old roleplayer from way back, PBEM / PbP gamer since the mid-90s. Over the decades I’ve played AD&D, GURPS, Underground, Call of Cthulhu, Heavy Gear, Fate and loads of other games. More recently, I’m finding myself a big-time fan of Free league’s YZE games, and really into big chunks of the OSR — namely, non-retroclone "neo-OSR" games like The Black Hack, Into the Odd, Knave and the like.

I never played — or even owned Warhammer FRP, but I certainly wish I had. I did have The Warlock of Firetop Mountain, and while that was my only brush with Fighting Fantasy, those Russ Nicholson illustrations made a deep impression on me that has lasted to this day. I love black and white fantasy / RPG art, I like lower fantasy settings, I like grim and perilous adventures, dangerous magic and all the rest. Thus, let’s play Warlock!

So for those of you I haven’t played with before (Jabes), or those who I’ve only played with once or twice (Len, cowleyc), I’m wide-open when it comes to honest discussion that improves the game. I have my quirks as we all do, so if you note something that’s bugging you or otherwise needs to be addressed, just bring it up here or PM me if you’d prefer.

Looking forward to this!

Jabes — you posted while I was drafting. You’re good to go not knowing anything about the OSR or Warhammer, just so you know. As long as you like down and dirty, you’ll be fine. ;)

Hey folks, great to see familiar faces and also some new ones! Looking forward to playing with all of you.

I love RPGs!

I talked a bit about my history with Advanced Fighting Fantasy in the recruitment post, but I first got interested in RPGs because my friend's older brother had the TMNT and Other Strangeness RPG. We made so many characters without ever knowing how to use them in a game. Later, his brother picked up Heroes Unlimited, also by Palladium Books, and we had a blast with that for a while using it to invent our own cool superhero universe. Instead of playing, we'd just imagine the stories they'd go on.

It wasn't until a young English teacher, Mr. Elliot, showed me how to actually play RPGs with Traveller that I fully grasped the concept. I started running AFF for my friends, and once I got the Traveller books I refereed a long-running game even into University with a little AD&D 2e sprinkled throughout. We did so much gaming with just the core rules and some random tables. So fun!

As my gaming group started going their separate ways, I lost touch with the hobby. It wasn't until the tail end of D&D 4e when I started to get back in. I was running a high school gaming club (trying to pay it forward from Mr. Elliot) but we were mostly focused on Magic: the Gathering. Even though it was a ton of fun, I was uncomfortable with how addicting and commercial that game was/is. So, I started running D&D. I always saw those shiny D&D books in hobby stores, but couldn't afford them as a kid. Now I was an adult with a full time job, so I got to live out that childhood fantasy.

I started running a bit of 4th edition, but I found out about the 5e play test. So, we switched over to that and it was so much fun! My love of RPGs was rekindled! I had recently become a father, so I couldn't spend much time on gaming, but my imagination was SO FIRED UP! So I began playing on Gamers Plane to squeeze in some more gaming time in my otherwise complicated schedule.

I have run a lot of 5e here, but I'm starting to transition into OSR systems. 5e is great, and I've enjoyed some really fun games with that system. But, I am really intrigued by the lighter rules systems that are custom-made for telling particular kinds of stories. I listen to a lot of podcasts and read a lot of blogs on the OSR, and it seems so AWESOME. These remind me a lot of the old systems like Traveller and Advanced Fighting Fantasy that I loved so much. So, I'm really grateful to folks like Harrigan who are promoting it for us new converts.

Oops, I kinda wrote an essay! TL;DR - RPGs explode my brain with creativity, and I'm excited to be gaming with you all :)

Fabulous intros, folks -- thanks for sharing and helping us all get to know one another a little better.

Question: does everyone have the book? If not, I'll drop some wiki-ish bits around the core mechanics and such...

I have the book. Will do one more review before we start rolling dice though!

I have something called the 'Traitor's Edition' of the core rulebook, from DriveThru RPG. I don't have the Kingdom Book or any of the other expansions.

The Traitor's Edition is also what I have.

Traitor's edition here as well!

I have a copy of the book, though I don't think it's any fancy edition.

Well, cool then. The Traitor's Edition is the new one. New cover, color, different font, layout, some new art maybe? (I don't have it -- I have the original, and the Black Edition that combines the core book, Kingdoms, and a couple of pieces from the Compendiums. (Like "Pluck." Don't know if that was added to the TE.)

Yep, Pluck is in TE! Not sure if this is useful, but here's the table of contents if you want to get a feel for what this edition has.

Cool -- thanks! I'll compare.

I know the biggest change is making Pluck non-optional, and making the crit rolls 1d6+Stamina damage beyond zero vs. *2d6*+ the same.

Where in the Traitor's Edition is Pluck discussed? I haven't had a chance to read the book carefully, but I didn't see anything about Pluck when I skimmed it.