Progression of Rats

I've finished off the wererat assassin. I'm not super happy with the painting, but I'm not super happy with the model either. The reaper bones miniatures are made of a low quality pvc. If you do pickup any of these miniatures I'd recommend thinking about them like the prepainted miniatures you might get out of a blind box, except that you'll be painting them yourself. The cost of the models makes them ideal for bulking up your collection, especially for things like role-playing games.  But the quality of the cast means there's a very low level of detail and you probably won't want to put a huge amount of effort into their paintjobs.

Shhhh. He's being sneaksy.

He's up to something...

I'm closing in on the last of the rat figures for the pathfinder campaign. Here's the current state of the Skaven Grey Seer that I've been gradually covering with paint. The model is very detailed but actually pretty easy to paint, with all the details accessible even after assembled. I think Games Workshop did an awesome job with all their clamshell plastic character models. After their finecast debacle they just really knocked it out of the park with these miniatures.

Ratsassin Completed

I was able to get one miniature all the way finished for the Tuesday Pathfinder campaign.  Here's the model for my character, a ratman ninja/monk, or as it's known in the Warhammer universe, a Skaven Assassin. The Player Characters are level four, going on five. My three level dip into monk is at an end and I'm just a couple levels away from getting into shadow dancer. Pathfinder has so many variants and options in it for every aspect of the character that it's possible to spend entire evenings weighing options and plotting progressions.

Sneaksy and Stabbity

Since we had a chance to explore a bit more of the dungeon we are trapped in, I have also expanded the dungeon map to include the rooms we opened up during the last play session.

Next, you put a Duergar in the box.

Paint Night!!! Also Some Maps.

I'm super excited for paint night tonight.  I'm just back from a lovey family vacation, the kiddo is sleeping over at the in-laws and I've got free time to apply paint to miniatures.  The plan is to get one or two rats finished up for use in the Tuesday game.

Also for sharing are a couple maps I drew after being inspired by the blog Dyson's Dodecahedron, which I found out about through Geek and Sundry's Signal Boost! show. They're for locations in an future RPG campaign I'd like to run. Not being an artist myself they're much rougher than I'd like, but I think with some copying and revisions I could make them quite presentable.

A Druid's Home

First up is A Druid's Home. To the east of Dunahara lives a druid.  He keeps entirely to himself, living in the hollow trunk of an enormous tree stump. A stream flows from left to right and a small path cuts across at two shallow points. The trail leading to the stump can be difficult for visitors to find as the druid has encouraged a wall of brambles to grow up around his home. The druid is entirely self sufficient. A patch of bushes provides berries and a small fish trap gives a bit of meat. Anything else the druid might need he gets by transforming into various forest beasts and hunting game.

Dunahara

Dunahara itself is a fishing town of moderate size. A great storm passed through many years ago, sinking a large vessel just off the coast. Many fisherman live in huts practically hanging off the cliff side, but there are a few larger buildings like a tavern and stable. A number of farms in the surrounding area supplement the local diet and economy. The capital lies three days cart ride to the south but less than a day by boat.  Dunahara's fish arrive fresh daily and are much sought after by the capital's citizens.

WHFRP: High Elf Seer

Here are rules for playing a High Elf Seer in Fantasy Flight Game's Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay. These rules are unofficial and part of a personal project to make High Elves a more interesting character choice in the game.  The game itself is excellent and has a lot of support in the form of adventures, campaigns and additional rules.

As an homage to their futuristic counterparts the Eldar, this new high elf class concentrates on prophecy and visions of the future.  This is the second career on the High Elf Mage path. It continues in the tradition of the first career, but adds some mechanics that allow the player some manipulation of fortune dice.

Find the previous project entries here:

• High Elf Mage
• High Elf Project Start

New Class: High Elf Seer
Requirements: Completed the High Elf Mage class.
Keywords: Academic, Arcane, Wizard, Intermediate

The incidence of High Elves gifted with the power of foresight is greater than any of the other races.  Elven mages in particular, with their frequent contact with the winds of magic, often receive visions of the future, though the meaning of these visions if often difficult to decipher.

Elven society values this ability and nurtures it when it is discovered. Powerful prophetic visions usually signal the coming of a great calamity and elven expeditions are frequently sent the world over to manipulate events to see that these prophecies are fulfilled or thwarted.

High Elf Mage Career Card: Each of the player's spells gain the following: Two Boons - Choose another character in medium range and choose whether to add one fortune die or one misfortune die to their next roll.

Primary Characteristics: Intelligence, Willpower
Career Skills: Channeling, Discipline, Education, Intuition, Observation, Magical Sight, Spellcraft
Talent Slots: Focus, Focus, Order
Advancement

• Action: 2
• Talent: 2
• Skill: 3
• Fortune: 2
• Conservative: 1
• Reckless: 0
• Wound: 1

New Talent: Prophecy

Talent Type: Focus

Description: Once per session, before a character within medium range of you makes a roll guess if they will succeed or fail.  If you are correct add two boons to their roll.

Stance: 2 Conservative, 2 Reckless

WHFRP: High Elven Mage

The most basic wizard you can field in a Warhammer Fantasy Battles High Elf army is the Mage, and so this seems the perfect jumping off point for the High Elf Project. The High Elf project is my effort to make High Elf characters in Fantasy Flight Game's Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay a more interesting race to play.

High Elves are supposed to be the masters of all magic. It is by the efforts of their entire race that the world is kept from being plunged into Chaos. Elves taught magic to the human barbarians, establishing the first Colleges of Magic within the empire. In order to teach manipulation of the winds of magic to such a short lived race they had to simplify their knowledge.  In fact, human understanding of magic is a child's toy compared to High Magic, literally breaking down the complexities of spellcasting into a simplified color system.


New Class: High Elf Mage
Requirements: High Elf
Keywords: Academic, Arcane, Wizard, Basic

After a century of training elven mages are finally considered to have mastered the rudiments of spellcasting. Often a high elf mage are along with overseas diplomatic missions to help ensure their success or to advance the inscrutable agenda of their elven masters.

High Elf Mage Career Card: In addition to learning High Magic spells, the High Elf Mage may learn the spells of one other Order.  Choose the order when starting the career.  The High Elf Mage may swap order cards using the rules for swapping talents.

Primary Characteristics: Intelligence, Willpower
Career Skills: Channeling, Discipline, Education, Intuition, Magical Sight, Spellcraft
Talent Slots: Focus, Order
Advancement

• Action: 3
• Talent: 1
• Skill: 2
• Fortune: 2
• Conservative: 1
• Reckless: 1
• Wound: 1

New Talent: High Magic

Talent Type: Order
Description: Once per encounter you may add two black dice to the difficulty of any spell cast within medium range.
Stance: 2 Conservative, 2 Reckless

Project: High Elves for Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay

If you at all enjoy roleplaying games and you love the Warhammer Universe then why haven't you played Fantasy Flight's excellent version of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay?  A group of friends and I have been running through a campaign for a while now and I've got to say it's really fun.

The game manages to keep the feel of the old version, where your character hopped from career to career as it advanced, picking up skills and abilities along the way.  But most of it has been streamlined now.  Abilities and spells are cards that you collect as you level up.  If you play like our group and take ownership of the cards when you select them then every character ends up with different abilities so they each feel unique.  The game uses a set of custom dice, which are interesting but also annoying.  The one set of dice in the main box is not really enough to go around when you have a table of four people and a GM all sharing them.

But after you've played it a while and looked at all the careers you'll notice that there's one group from the Warhammer universe that is particularly under represented.  Elves only have two dedicated classes, Swordmaster and Wardancer, and those are spread across High Elf and Wood Elf.  Not ideal if you want to explore what it feels like to be an immortal from across the ocean.

Stone Corridors was started to give me a place that could serve as an outlet not just for miniatures and battle reports but also as a place to offer up fan content, rules and scenarios.  Warhammer High Elves are supposed to be masters of magic for this setting and I think they deserve the rules to show this.  I've got some ideas percolating and I'm excited to share them here. Stay tuned.

One Page Dungeon Contest

Like I said in my first post, this blog isn't just about Warhammer 40K. I'm also an avid roleplay gamer. Over at the Cartographer's Guild they're running a contest for one page dungeons. My entry is Tower of Light, Tunnel of Stone.
The map was created with the Wizards of the Coast Dungeon Tile Mapper. You can use it to get a bigger version of my map. I should note that I've made some hand edits to the tower sections, specifically to the placement and number of stairs. Just cut and paste the code below when you select Import New from the Tile Mapper's toolbox menu.

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The adventure was mainly designed to be used in a fantasy setting, but since it's not tied to a particular system it could easily be used as a Rogue Trader adventure by replacing the monsters in the encounter with something setting appropriate.