Home from our face-to-face Warhammer 2nd ed game where I managed to stab a giant spider for 32 points of damage when I landed my first hit with the sword which I had gotten from the wizard because he had never used it. I name it *Spinnentöter*.
Another page from Knives. This is the section where I’m writing down the inner monologue of the referee that is preparing the game. I expect there will be four or five pages with this kind of stuff:
Plus some extra pages with tables for stuff, I guess?
Anyway, this is the first page.
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This section offers examples from an imaginary game illustrating all the ideas. The three people involved Alex, Berta and Claudia. Alex and Berta are players and Claudia is the referee.
Before meeting for the first time, Claudia already knows that the two characters have Status-2 because it’s the start of the campaign. These two kids did not inherit Education or Status. Looking at the Status table, this means they’ll need a job. The Education section mentions library adventures. (Both are listed on 2023-01-27 Adventures and Children.) Should either of the two plan on playing a mage, increasing Education is going to be on their mind.
2023-01-27 Adventures and Children
So visiting somebody in a library and getting a book is an adventure. Who might be opposed? Other urchins that didn’t get the job: Urs the bully, with Status-3 (also an orphan but with slightly better Status) and Discipline-1 (which I just assigned). He’s not much of a boss, but there’s also Strength-8 (above average) and Brawling-1 (also assigned). If Discipline and Brawling are his only skills, he’s 18 years old, two years older than the new characters Alex and Berta are going to make.
Here’s a question for later: Does Urs have friends? Does he have enemies? Play to find out! I have a feeling he probably has a lackey, and there’s probably a love interest as well.
The library probably belongs to a wizard. Let’s call her Ulrike the Beautiful. The starting village also needs a name. Maybe the village has always belonged to her family and the rulers all have names that sound similar: Ulrich, Ulberth, Ulberga. Let’s call the village Ulrichen.
This makes me wonder about Urs the bully. His name sounds similar to Ulrike. Are they related? A question to save for later.
Let’s try and think of more adventures. How about adding a secret society? “The Brothers and Sisters of Horned Mask” – a society that wears masks at their meetings. They all know each other in real life but within their society, they also represent the animal or demon of their mask. So miss Trudeberg, the head of a large family farm, wears the wooden mask of a devil with deer horns and red pearls hanging from its ears. It’s the local “Cherry Devil”, known to tempt the young with poisonous fruit. And indeed, she is a talented brewer of potions and poisons.
Trudeberg is looking for a particular fruit, the “Black Eye Grape”. It grows in the ruin of Hawk Rock, rumoured to be home to a “wild man”, a forest creature that doesn’t speak and hates all humans.
All of these ideas show that some random tables for quick name generation are in order because names are important. They allow everybody at the table to write down a name and add more information. This is how the imaginary world gets fixed in our imagination.
#RPG #Knives