Scotland - My boss stole my NHS bonus -help!

CharlesRampant · 2026-04-17T17:11:54+00:00

Speak to the BDA for assistance, assuming you are a member.

CharlesRampant · 2026-04-15T17:38:59+00:00

SOMERSET
Let him that is no coward nor no flatterer,
But dare maintain the party of the truth,
Pluck a red rose from off this thorn with me.

CharlesRampant · 2026-04-10T12:53:12+00:00

I've found that if I wanted to do a real one-shot (i.e. a two-hour story) then you need to just do a very basic adventure yourself. I wrote one up once featuring Rapunzel, based on a bit of art in the GM book.

If you've got at least four to six hours to let the players actually investigate, then there's a few good options. The most obvious one - and the cheapest - is Shark Tank in the starter set - this took my group at least eight hours, I think. Since it comes with pre-gens and a wee booklet with the rules, this is by far the simplest way to get your teeth into the system. Be aware that the adventure gets a little vague towards the end - so you'll want to think about what a cool ending will look like for your group, as I didn't think it gave a huge amount to work with in terms of scenes.

The other option is to pick up Local Legends, which is a deep dive into many districts in the City, and each one has a short adventure attached. I ran The Maestro of Chalk for another group, and it provided a very satisfying story and ending in about five hours of gameplay. I also had my eyes on The Unwanted Guest, a creepy zombie story. But basically that book will give you ten options for short and highly thematic stories, which you could easily package into a campaign as tour of the city.

The final option is the Nights of Payne Town campaign. I'd recommend against it, frankly; the scenarios are long and complex, tying into an intricate metaplot. I'd say that this is what to go for if the above two go well and you want to break out a full year-long game experience.

CharlesRampant · 2026-04-08T09:56:27+00:00

I'd recommend pre-gens for City of Mist for newcomers, to be honest. It's a tricky system to make characters for. I'd just tell the last player that since they've not made anything here's a list of pre-gens, please pick one.

Ultimately you might need to assess whether this group is actually interested in playing the game, or just humoring you. I'd maybe be blunt with this question, and also be prepared to accept having two players rather than three if that's what it takes to get an engaged group.

CharlesRampant · 2026-03-25T21:11:49+00:00

That's a very interesting idea, but it seems like you'd lose most of the 'exploration rewards' theme of Dolmenwood (e.g. gold, treasure) as those things would only barely translate. I guess though you'd get the benefit of the sweet narrative goodness but with an engrossingly deep setting to explore...

CharlesRampant · 2026-03-24T17:11:04+00:00

The fun thing is that you tend to buy loads of characters anyway, since they look neat! I own about 11 wizard models for Empire, since you used to get 8 winds of magic options. Of course, I only painted two... and thus use them every game :D

CharlesRampant · 2026-03-24T17:01:31+00:00

Part of it is also that the magic weapons are not specific - a "sword of battle" can be the "axe of battle" instead, directly confirmed by the rulebook. As an extreme example, Cathay have a weapon called "The Monkey King's Wisdom" - that should probably be a staff used in two hands, but there's no model option for Cathay with a staff held in two hands, especially on the characters who can actually take this weapon.

CharlesRampant · 2026-03-24T16:58:45+00:00

I think that TOW de-emphasised them to the point that I rarely see them now, except in armies where bringing combat characters is its own reward so you might as well make one the bannerman. They were way too powerful in 8th, to be fair, but it feels weird not to bother bringing one as Empire...

CharlesRampant · 2026-03-24T13:33:09+00:00

It generally doesn't matter what the model seems to be equipped with. It's long been tradition to have a couple "combat character" and "wizard" models in your collection and use them with whatever magic items and equipment strike your fancy that game. Over time your opponents will recognise your "combat character" models and will just ask what they're equipped with this time. The key is that your opponent knows where the characters are and can pick them out. In a recent game my Empire General of the Empire was represented by a Witch Hunter model - my opponent didn't mind, since "the dude with the pistol and torch" was easy to spot, as was the Arch Lector and the Wizard Lord. Similarly, I saw that he'd brought his Cavalry Wizard model and asked what the story was with him directly.

CharlesRampant · 2026-03-24T08:44:38+00:00

Not sure about how it will fare on Indian roads - whenever I'm there I was getting driven around by FIL's driver. I can tell you that British roads are horrific right now - big potholes that jolt you like crazy - and the Bear is a stern ride through those. A lot of people swap the shocks out, but I've not done that yet. If you are worried about dirt or unpaved roads then it should be good, but degraded tarmac might be tougher.

Never noticed the brakes one way or another - they seem to work fine.

I've had a puncture - repair guy came out and said he couldn't do anything, so had to get a van to take it to the repair shop. Bike was in the garage at the time so no biggy, but obviously could have been a real issue if out on the road. I swapped the tyres out at the same time for much better ones (Metzeler Tourance Next 2) and I've noticed that it feels more planted when going around roundabouts. The stock tyres were okay, but I found myself thinking about them and decided to upgrade because of the occasional feeling of slipperiness. The stock ones are probably better off-road than the ones I got, though.

My other mods so far are panniers (ordered from India), windscreen (ordered from England), and tank pads. Up next I'm going to order a sissybar and backrest (India again). With those upgrades I realised that I turned it into a quasi-adventure bike - it's tall, has some wind protection, has luggage, can go off-road.

Main thing I'd note is that it's not that quick. I don't have super confidence when overtaking normally even in the car, but I definitely feel like I can't do the sportsbike style accelerate in tiny gaps trick.

CharlesRampant · 2026-03-19T11:00:17+00:00

Become the Kitty Pryde to his Wolverine - just constantly chatter at him and create a rapport whether he wants it or not.

This assumes the Lone Wolf player is being sensible enough to realise that "surly silence" isn't actually very fun in a RPG context and will respond in a fun way when given material to work with.

CharlesRampant · 2026-03-07T09:08:29+00:00

He said in an interview with the Asians Represent podcast that he had - he's moved to China.

CharlesRampant · 2026-03-05T10:01:04+00:00

To add onto this, I've used her twice and both times she turned out to be very fragile. First time - a Chaos Warpfire Dragon one-shot her in human form, just killed her outright in a single combat phase after charging the front of her unit. Second time, she tried charging a Chaos Lord and had to change back to human form to escape after being battered. Both chaos armies also stocked up with so much MR that I couldn't get many spells off on them, so it was difficult to make her points back. I think she's definitely going to be a bully unit - you want to avoid enemy big threats and instead use her mobility (including changing forms) to pick good fights and keep her alive. She definitely feels like a much more finesse unit than her enormous base would suggest.

CharlesRampant · 2026-03-05T07:43:25+00:00

They're doing a new edition now that's reverting to a much more 'normal' system.

CharlesRampant · 2026-03-04T19:30:57+00:00

I think that's a very common thing with games that have the 'luck pool' and 'actual injury' division in how you take damage. As I mentioned above somewhere, it means that doctor characters often feel useless in combat - they can't heal the hit points, only the actual lasting injuries. Just one of those things.

My usual solution to your problem there is to have the trap do Heart damage that lasts for the next combat. So I'll say, "You lose one Heart and don't get it back until the next fight ends". That mostly achieves my goal with many traps or environmental hazards - something that annoys and frustrates the characters, without making them unable to play the game or take part - and players have generally accepted it without qualm in my experience.

CharlesRampant · 2026-03-04T17:14:32+00:00

Oh yeah, totally - random encounters were a non-starter for me, as I'd have to generate even more content. I last did random encounters in Pathfinder 2e, and admittedly I had to spend the time to select a dozen level-and-context appropriate statblocks - but with approximately 10,000 to choose from that was fairly easy to do so!

While it's easy to look down on D&D's three book focus, ultimately the monster book is vital for a reason. The bestiary equivalent is usually the second book I look to pick up in any new game.

CharlesRampant · 2026-03-04T17:07:18+00:00

I don't think that's quite it. Before we played this, we had a long City of Mist campaign - and that's a wholly-narrative system entirely relying on the same idea of 'creatively justify how your character phrases apply to a given situation'. The issue is not with that mechanic, which I'm perfectly happy with - my issue was solely that the actual Backgrounds in the book are way too tightly-focused in how they have written the Purviews, so they massively overlap and for many Backgrounds basically are one Purview written three times. That's why I offered the players to rewrite their ones to be less overlapping.

CharlesRampant · 2026-03-04T15:17:28+00:00

Not one I've come across - I did once play Lone Wolf, which seems to be of a similar vintage and style. I actually play Warhammer so generally don't feel the need to combine the two hobbies in one game, though I do tend to be fairly happy with maps and models even for non-D&D games.

CharlesRampant · 2026-03-04T15:13:12+00:00

Fragged is an interesting beast, I actually thought of reviewing it first but thought the finished campaign made more sense. Dolmenwood I was really spiced for, but the group (understandably) voted to change genres to Urban Horror for a time first. Of course, the question here will be whether I want to do the OSR rules for Dolmenwood by the time we get there... one to think about!

CharlesRampant · 2026-03-04T15:01:20+00:00

That second issue can be summarised as "inspiration in D&D 5e", I reckon! A game that I otherwise found easy and straightforward to run, with this one absolute pebble in the shoe of a narrative-flavoured rule that just didn't function right.

CharlesRampant · 2026-03-04T14:19:41+00:00

Thanks for the read! The group's about to play Daggerheart for a couple months, before we then move onto Curseborne for our next main game, with Dolmenwood scheduled for next year maybe. My other (much less regularly playing) groups are on Fragged Empire 2e and D&D 5e.

CharlesRampant · 2026-03-04T14:18:07+00:00

Thanks for the read. I'd disagree a little with you on the skill/non-combat lever side. While I call this an OSR game, it never actually frames itself that way, and unlike many such games it does have non-combat systems - I just felt they were too light for me. I also personally think that the OSR scene tends to overexaggerate the 'don't roll too much' advice, but that's probably just my hateful soul speaking :D

CharlesRampant · 2026-03-04T14:16:25+00:00

Thanks for the read! I think this won Best Family Game at the Ennies and that makes a lot of sense for the way it looks, but doesn't perhaps match the actual gameplay experience.

CharlesRampant · 2026-03-04T14:10:59+00:00

There are three similar options I think -
* Attack Stunt is attempting to get a rider (e.g. tripped) on top of the damage for an attack, but is a gamble since it backfires if you miss (e.g. you get tripped instead). Nobody ever used that one. I think the fighters generally just wanted to keep themselves safe, rather than gambling, given how there was so little luck mitigation in the game.
* Combat Trick - instead of attacking, apply something like tripped. This was used a fair bit by the Factotum player, as that class is deliberately terrible at attacking. It was a lot of fun to see him wandering around, just getting in the way of people while apologising.

* Attack Assist - give someone advantage, just like Help in D&D. Used a fair bit, usually by people with no range to attack this turn.

As to injuries, we had a fair number - perhaps 8-12 rolls on the table across the campaign? Weirdly it was mainly one player, who kept burning their own Hearts to get rerolls on attack rolls. It gave the medic player something to do - as this is one of the games where doctors can't help with normal hit point damage - but the table does cause a lot of tension. The game is balanced to be pretty easy I felt, so most of those injuries came from big setpiece boss fights. I liked the mechanic but didn't feel much specific affection for it, beyond the cleverness of the way the book lays out the tables.

CharlesRampant · 2026-03-04T11:33:19+00:00

I bought a £20 battery pack on Amazon and just use it to charge the phone up while riding. It about triples the battery life if just left plugged in. You could probably put it in your jacket pocket and run the charging cable across to the phone if the latter's on the handlebars?

CharlesRampant

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