Warhammer RPG: Bone Picker -> Smuggler

Another one of my many gaming commitments is a weekly meeting for Warhammer Roleplay. For the uninitiated; the word "Warhammer" is usually associated with the miniatures wargame (either the Fantasy or Science Fiction versions) however in this case it refers to the tabletop Roleplaying game - so cooperative play with only one character each rather than competitive play with a whole army each. I won't go into much more detail as I'll assume the majority of this blog's readers will require or desire no further clarity.

We agreed at the start that we would only play 'lowest class' starting careers. I rolled a few nice starters such as Soldier and Marine but passed on them until I finally hit a suitably low career: Bone Picker! The other players have started with Peasant, Charcoal Burner and Hedge Wizard. Yeah that last one is 'a bit good' but the character concept is of a midwife that lurks amongst (and is a fellow member of) the lowest citizens; she'll be moving up through healing careers rather than Wizard careers - although we'll see if she's not tempted away by more magic points :P

We've been playing multi-adventure sessions for a few weeks so the characters are just getting ready to finish their starting career and move into their second. Our Peasant will be having a wash and becoming a Servant (with a long term view of going through Valet and Squire to Knight) our Charcoal Burner will continue to develop his outdoor/wilderness skills - from memory he has Woodsman lined up as his next career. I plan to go from Bone Picker to Smuggler which will line me up for Shieldbearer and access to the warrior careers. I don't have my rulebook next to me so I'm not sure that I've used the correct career names in this paragraph; but you get the idea!

For this campaign we have revisited a format that I championed a few years ago when we were playing the science fiction version of this game (Dark Heresy). Each of us takes turns in a round-robin fashion of running a short adventure for the other players. Usually one member of the group commits to being the Games Master for the whole campaign and they are responsible for much of the story - but in this format the hat is passed around the table and the duties of 'world building' are shared.

We had problems making it work with Dark Heresy as each GM fell back on old habits and started running "arc" adventures that continued from their previous adventures; the result being that characters would suddenly find themselves back on Mudworld for part 2 of "Mudworld adventure" despite having just completed part 4 of "Deathworld adventure"; then they'd jump back to another continued adventure before coming back to Mudworld 3... as that campaign progressed the warping became too jarring and the whole thing crashed. After careful consideration we concluded that the trick is to ensure that adventures are short, sweet and have just enough hooks to spawn new independent adventures. Ideally each adventure is comparable in structure to a mid-season Buffy or Dr Who episode; nothing too major happens but characters can still develop.

Having said that it has been suggested that we may move from our collaboratively designed village to a town when our characters become middle class citizens. Perhaps we could consider this the end of Season One? ;)