[Session] Fauxhammer S03E04: Dead Zeppelin

Red guy turned out to be
a red herring.

The rest of the family was out of town for a week, so I seized the opportunity to hold a fourth session for our Mordschlag campaign on the 4th of April. I used the last few months to digest player feedback and overhaul the core system to something closer to WFRP1e in feel. The most significant changes include transitioning to twelve attributes instead of ten, using the units of the attack roll to determine hit location, rolling d6 for damage, introducing Mythras-like special effects, and a experimenting with a freeform skill system. The feedback was surprisingly positive, so I feel I'm on track now and not just throwing shit at the wall to see what sticks.

I'm a big fan of train levels in first-person shooters. We had one in the last season, where the party attempted to escape a speeding skaven train. It was one of the most memorable adventures in the campaign. I thought it was time to try another adventure where they are confined to a small enclosed space with something dangerous - this time, in air!

Dramatis Personae

Blitzkrieg, dwarf veteran slayer: Half-deaf, naked, and in possession of a magical axe he fished out from the belly of the legendary Moby Squig. He is on his way to Altdorf to find the love of his life: the dwarf priestess Agonia.

Edgar, human [redacted] (cameo): The former monster slayer's skin turned black and white after a short trip to the Realms of Chaos, where he saw several of his clones crucified, was granted apocalyptic visions, and obtained an ominous sword. He is also followed by the black and white horse of a former Chaos warrior.

Paether von Sternwart, human astromancer: Eager to get back to Altdorf, graduate as an archmage, and put his elven sword back into the daemon prince it was pulled out of.

Ruben Schultz, human mercenary captain: Downtrodden Sylvanian noble on his way back home from a Breatonnian trip. He firmly believes there are no vampires in Sylvania. 

Rudolf Fürst, human ex-daemonologist (NPC): Former student who summoned a herald of Slaanesh, caused some trouble, and was beaten into becoming Ruben's squire.

Session Report

The party concluded the last session with their balloon hanging from the nose of a dwarven zeppelin. Following a short rescue mission they met Roli Balderson, the wheelchair-bound captain of the ship. They learned the airship is carrying passengers between Araby and Marienburg. Roli offered the party a free trip to Altdorf as compensation for the accident. However, he cautioned them against visiting the city. Since the incident at the docks there is a sickening green smog hanging over the streets, weird folks are gathering there, the decent ones are leaving in throngs, and the emperor is dying.

In the first half of the session the party got to know some of the crew and passengers.

• Squinting Skegi was the half-eyed navigator of the ship. He was rarely seen out of the map room or away from the window with a telescope on his remaining eye.
• Mighty Margit was the leader of the stevedores. She had the lovely voice of a long-time smoker and whiskey drinker. She had a crush on Blitzkrieg since the moment she met her.
• Hardy Harald was the dirty chef with a permanent scowl on his face and froth leaking from the corner of his mouth. He showed a surprising amount of respect towards Blitzkrieg because his brother was also a slayer - one who died early in his career.
• Benjamin Hill was a halfling stand-up comedian. It was a miracle he wasn't thrown out of the airship earlier for his jokes.
• Rüdiger von Kopfsmerz and his family were the quintessential irritating imperial nobles who thought the world revolved around them.
• Alfonz Verpacken was the Kopfsmerz family's valet. They didn't bother booking him a room, so he travelled in the storage with the luggage.
• Faqir al-Gebra introduced himself as an Arabyan envoy. In reality, he was a Strigany charlatan trying to rip people off by gambling. His latest victim was Rüdiger, who lost some money and family jewels while playing with the "envoy". Blitzkrieg tried his luck against him. The dwarf lost a small sum and couldn't prove the "Arabyan" was cheating.
• Professor Heinz Burgsch was an academic from the Altdorf University specialized in Nehekharan archaeology. On his latest dig, he discovered an undisturbed tomb in the Land of the Dead. He packed a few sarcophagi containing the remains of a priest and some of his warriors on the airship. Paether had a long discussion with him about his discoveries while Blitzkrieg was gambling.

Skegi discovered that a green cloud was coming from the direction of Altdorf, which they didn't have the time to evade. Roli told everyone to return to their rooms and prepare for turbulence. Paether started getting headaches from the warp dust cloud.

Far from their tombs
they still guard.

The adventurers, of course, didn't heed the captain's warnings. Ruben and Blitzkrieg wanted to search the sarcophagi, fearing that the cloud would raise the dead or cause some magical bullshit. They even bought garlic and salt from Harald at a ridiculously high price. Meanwhile, Paether realized they haven't seen Rudolf for a while, so he went looking for him before he caused any trouble.

They all met at the storage room at the back of  the gondola. They didn't find any sarcophagi, but they saw Benjamin getting ripped apart by a pair of red arms that disappeared into the darkness with a bang coming from above. Among the boxes, they found Rudolf in the middle of a protective circle. He told Ruben that he heard some weird noises from above, panicked, and summoned a Bloodletter of Khorne to protect himself. Then he lost control of the daemon. After Ruben disciplined his squire, they all climbed up through the trapdoor to hunt down the daemon.

The adventurers found themselves in a huge labyrinthine cargo bay full of crates. Claw marks showed the creature's path, but the adventurers had no time to track them as the shambling corpses of the dwarven stevedores attacked them. After beating them down, they scrutinized the corpses and realized that they weren't killed by the daemon.

While Ruben and Blitzkrieg held back another wave of zombies deeper in the cargo bay, Paether zealously followed his daemon-slaying elf sword's light. He found the Bloodletter climbing up a crate in an Exorcist-like spider-climb. Paether killed the daemon with a single strike, but then acid started spraying from the screaming corpse. The acid burned the wizard, but Ruben pulled him out of the acidic stream's path, which kept flowing for a minute before stopping.

After the last wave of zombies, ancient khopesh-wielding skeletal warriors showed up. While the two warriors quickly dispatched them, the skeletal remains started to move again. While they were busy destroying them, a cackling voice called forth a cloud of scarabs, gravely wounding Ruben and slightly wounding Blitzkrieg. They followed the caster to the other end of the cargo bay, where Paether stunned another bunch of undead stevedores with a stormblast, then climbed down through another trapdoor to the entry hall, and burst into the lounge, where they finally met the mummy wielding a Scarab staff and a meteoric iron khopesh. In a quick and brutal battle, Paether disarmed the mummy's staff-wielding hand with a magical blast. Literally, Ruben was gravely wounded, but in the end, the adventurers prevailed.

Once the danger was over and they left the cloud, the professor got a bitchslap from the captain for bringing dangerous cargo on the ship, Blitzkrieg received special treatment from Margit, and everyone got a warm handshake for saving the day. As the airship reached Altdorf, Margit visited the adventurers to give each one of them a backpack 

[Update] Irons in the Fire

How it felt cutting the
umbilical cord.

With the birth of my daughter and my son being in his Terrible Twos, my life is once again in turmoil. I hope we!re going to reach a point where we adapt or no longer give a crap about the current situation in a few months. In the meantime I'll spend my limited free time with the following:

• Mordschlag: Since we're done with Death's Dark Shadow and on the threshold of a new chapter, it is about time I analysed player feedback and overhauled the mechanics. One thing everyone agreed on was that they like random hit locations rolling for damage. I'm also thinking about reintroducing some of WFRP1e's lost characteristics and introducing a more freeform skill system.
• Eremus: Because I got extremely bored of running Old-School Essentials and wanted to referee something that isn't D&D, I converted the Eremus campaign to Mythras. In-game the changes were explained by a cataclysmic event that started messing up the setting. After four sessions we decided to finish the campaign using Mythras. I had the opportunity to run the campaign's penultimate adventure again after a major overhaul on Kalandorok Társasága using OpenQuest. It was a blazing fast and endlessly amusing session.
• Dragonbane: I'm aching to give this game finally a shot. I have a lot of issues with some of its design decisions, but I fucking love this game and its community. I'm planning to run a conversion of Legendary Duck Tower as a Jaquays memorial game once I'm done with one of the above campaigns. Once have some actual experience, I'll definitely write a proper review for Dragonbane.

I don't dare to plan more for this year. I'll do my best to blog about all the above though, so get ready for more house rules, conversion notes, and even less reviews.

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[Session] Fauxhammer S03E03: Daemonslayer

The epitome of gothic horror.

The third session of our Mordschlag campaign was on the 22nd of June, where we finished our adventures in Kreutzhofen.

Dramatis Personae

Blitzkrieg, dwarf veteran slayer: Half-deaf, naked, and in possession of a magical axe he fished out from the belly of the legendary Moby Squig. He is on his way to Altdorf to find the love of his life: the dwarf priestess Agonia.

Edgar, human [redacted] (cameo): The former monster slayer's skin turned black & white after a short trip to the Realms of Chaos, where he saw several of his clones crucified, was granted apocalyptic visions, and obtained an ominous sword. He is also followed by the black and white horse of a former chaos warrior.

Paether von Sternwart, human astromancer: Eager to get back to Altdorf, graduate as an archmage, and put his elven sword back into the daemon prince it was pulled out of.

Ruben Shultz, human mercenary captain: Downtrodden sylvanian noble on his way back home from a breatonnian trip. He firmly believes there are no vampires in Sylvania.

Session Report

Following last night's events the adventurers interrogated Rudolf Fürst about what's going on. It turned out the scholar got interested in daemonology while studying in Altdorf. He summoned a daemon of Slaanesh who promised to appear at a random time in the future to kill him. Fürst went to the edge of the Empire hoping that he can run and hide from the daemon. The adventurers promised Fürst to keep an eye on him so they can catch the daemon.

The interrogation was interrupted by Bruno, the militia captain. He informed the party that there was another murder attempt, this time against one of Magnus Richthofen's farmhands. The victim is alive, but dying, and Dr. Entesang is nowhere to be found. Edgar stayed with Rudolf in the inn, while the other went to the doctor's house.

Blitzkrieg kicked in the doctor's door and entered the house with his comrades. Paether sensed a slight magic inside, so they started going through the doctor's belonging. They found spell components, books of necromancy, books of science, and a large number of bills and payment notices about various scientific devices. Many of these were for a different name, so Paether started to suspect that the doctor is in incognito here. He put some of these away as potential tools for ransom.

The investigation was disrupted by the drunk gravedigger. He wasn't too keen on talking until he got some of the doctor's finest wines. It turned out he earned some beer money by digging up fresh corpses for the doctor, who has a laboratory hidden under the Reichenbach manor. The old tale of the Reichenbach manor being burned down by bandits also turned out to be bogus: the gravedigger said it was the villagers of Kreutzhofen who lynched the Reichenbach's for being tyrannical assholes.

At the ruins of the Reichenbach manor the party found a metal pole that was time and time again hit by lightning bolts, and the door to the cellar. Despite the mess down there it was obvious that the place was occupied from the magically sealed door and runic traps. In the laboratory the doctor and his hunchback assistant were about to raise his patchwork Frankenstein's monster bye the power of weird science! As the lightning zapped it the body raised and with a bone chilling groan it said: "Just five more minutes..."

Our intrepid heroes weren't startled by the sight, which surprised the doctor. Entesang declared that he never hurt anyone and explained how on the long his research can benefit mankind. The adventurers didn't care about what's going on, they just need a doctor, right now. So Entesang and Igor left the creature in the laboratory to clean up while they visited the victim.

Back in the inn Rudolf was enjoying the safety of being tied up next to a weird warrior meditating with white eyes and a black and white hellblade on his lap. Paether realized that Edgar's sword created an anti-magical area, which is what probably kept the daemon away. The party thought about pulling Rudolf out of his shelter to use him as bait for the daemon, but ended up dropping the idea. Instead they visited the scorched house to see if they can salvage anything from Rudolf's burnt notes and books.

"Someday - and that day may never
come - I'll fuck you up. But until
that day, accept this justice as
 gift on my summoning's day."

Paether sensed an ominous presence within the house, but found no one inside. Instead the adventurers heard voices that tried to tempt them into treacherous acts against their comrades. They were tenacious though. Pather cast light on Ruben's sword, hoping it will reveal the daemon, to no avail. Then Blitzkrieg had a brilliant idea: if the daemon likes playing with his prey, Rudolf Fürst, then he is going to go back to the inn and kill him. That angered the daemon enough to make them manifest and attack furiously.

Ruben wanted to flee at the sight of the Herald of Slaanesh, but Paether helped him regain his cool and join the battle. Blitzkrieg held his ground against the daemon, until finally Paether - perusing the stormy weather - cast a lightning bolt that blew the herald to pieces. Rudolf was grateful for what the adventurers did for him. To cleanse himself from his sins he offered to join Ruben as a squire. Ruben promised to leave him at the first monastery if he doesn't perform well in his new role. Edgar woke up from his meditation and didn't remember jackshit. The guests at the inn were paid a few rounds to make sure they don't remember the weird shit happening around the inn tonight.

Except of course when they had to testify for Lazlo Lazlovich, who was let out of prison. Bruno also learned that Richthofen wasn't planning a revolution, but to deliver supplies to Mortensholm via his balloon. Since the recent beastman attacks and the daemon were enough reason to upkeep the state of emergency, he got what he wanted and let Richthofen recover his guns - at the cost of leaving a few of them in hands of the militia.

Lazlo said good bye to the party and continued his journey to Altdorf by boat. Richthofen took off with the adventurers to fly south first, then try his balloon at a longer trip after that, to Altdorf. Alas on the way to Mortensholm they lost control of the balloon because of some mechanical malfunction, then the balloon got punctured and started losing air as they ploughed through a huge cloud. After a bit of a panic and prayers though the balloon's passengers realised they weren't losing altitude - in fact, something was carrying them... Once they left the cloud they found out that their balloon was punctured by the nose of a dwarven zeppelin!

And that ends our adventures in Death's Dark Shadow's Kreutzhofen. After that I took some time to revisit rules and continue the Eremus campaign too (using Mythras, for the sake of variety). We'll continue sometime next year, once I recovered from our second kid's birth.

[Session] Fauxhammer S03E02: Revelations

With that tongue they can easily
reach your back molars.

We held the second session of our Mordschlag campaign on the 4th of April, with two players present in person, and one virtually - staring at miniatures and maps through a shitty little webcam attached to my table. That's what you get for loitering in Scotland!

Dramatis Personae

Blitzkrieg, dwarf veteran slayer: Half-deaf, naked, and in possession of a magical axe he fished out from the belly of the legendary Moby Squig. He is on his way to Altdorf to find the love of his life: the dwarf priestess Agonia.

Edgar, human [redacted]: The former monster slayer's skin turned black & white after a short trip to the Realms of Chaos, where he saw several of his clones crucified, was granted apocalyptic visions, and obtained an ominous sword. He is also followed by the black and white horse of a former chaos warrior.

Paether von Sternwart, human astromancer: Eager to get back to Altdorf, graduate as an archmage, and put his elven sword back into the daemon prince it was pulled out of.

Session Report

After a hearty breakfast our intrepid adventurers decided that they should visit the nearby village of Weilerberg, to find an old woman who knows one of the suspects of last night's murder: the young druidess. Frau Eberhauer turned out to be a retired elementalist. She told her visitors that the druidess they are looking for is a feral child called Wanda, who appeared two years ago around the Moon Pool. She is in her teens, has some magical talents, and more than likely innocent, because she never wanders far from her territory. She is also respected by the locals, who send her baskets of food in hope of a good harvest. Frau Eberhauer told the party where do people leave their gifts, and even sent a basket of jams.

After plowing through a dark forest the party arrived to the glade they were looking for, then got ambushed by five beastmen. Paether conjured a pair of wings to fall back to a better position, while Blitzkrieg and the Edgar held the beastmen back. A combination of magical windblast, lightning bolts, and steel killed three of the beasts. One fled south along the river, the other fled west into the forest, until he was caught by animated vines. When the adventurers found him they saw it's capable of regeneration, so they dispatched him a swift and brutal manner. It was only then that the druidess showed herself.

The girl was suspicious, but thanks to their valiant efforts shown against the minions of Chaos and the jam they brought the party quickly earned her trust. Wanda lead them to a lake deep in the forest, and told them, that she too has felt that an evil presence appeared lately near Kreutzhofen, and that the waters of the pool will offer them guidance.

Paether was the first to take a bath in the pool. He saw a vision of a sick old oak with six saplings growing under it - but five of them seemed insubstantial, with birds unable to rest on their branches. Then he saw the vision of three blue faces on the sky reminding him of the daemon prince whom he pulled his sword out of a year ago. When the wizard raised said sword to the sky, the demonic faces were distorted by agony and disappeared. When Blitzkrieg took the plunge, he didn't get anything other than wet. When Edgar gave it a shot, the lake catapulted him out.

Without new leads the party returned to Kreutzhofen to investigate Magnus Richthofen, a local landowner whom Bruno, the milita captain, suspects of planning a rebellion. After presuading his two dimwit, labourers the party entered the barn, where they met the landowner. It turned out Magnus was just a selfmade scientist and engineer, who wanted to create a balloon. His plan was to use his invention to ship the guns Bruno confiscated to Mortensholm in the Border Princes, to aid the fight against the greenskins. He offered the party a ride to Altdorf, if they help him recover his guns and join him to Mortensholm.

After the deal was made the adventurers returned to Kreutzhofen to visit Rudolf Fürst, the student whose door got a penis nailed to it last night. There was a storm coming, and far away to the north they saw several lightning bolts strike around the same location. While that was suspicious, they didn't have time to take a detour, because there was another vulgar surprise on the student's door. There was a strange smell in the air and Rudolf's reactions were hostile to the knocking. Soon a Fiend of Slaanesh burst through it, while Rudolf ran up to the attic to start a fire.

Edgar came under the effect of the fiend's musky odour, trying to hold Blitzkrieg back from attacking them, but was pushed aside. Dwarven steel and magic destroyed the monster, who melted into a fragrant rainbowy puddle. By the time the locals came to check out what's going out the house was burning and a hysterical Bruno was brought down by the party. Paether knew that Bruno was trying to incinerate occult books in desperation, yet they told the locals that it was some greasy stuff that caught fire.

While the villagers were busy fighting the flames, Bruno admitted to this captors that he summoned the demon to protect himself from something more horrifying...

Pushing Things Over the Edge

One of the things we are experimenting was throwing out Luck Points, which allow you to reroll tests in Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay. Instead, if you are really not satisfied with your roll, you can choose to push the test. This allows you to make another roll, with two caveats: the second roll is final and you gain a number of stress (which leads to insanity), or corruption (which leads to mutation), or wounds equal to half the units of your final roll. Which one you gain depends on what kind of roll you pushed - e.g. breaking down a door will likely cause some wounds because you bruise yourself, while regaining control over a spell will result in corruption.

Three sessions in this is one of the rules that will likely stay. My players like using it when things look desperate and I'm satisfied with the pace corruption and stress accumulates. I also like reminding them when things go south, and tempting them into using it. That short moment while they hesitate whether they should give in or accept failure is priceless.

[Homebrew] Mordschlag Hit Location and Damage

Tis but a scratch!

We had the second session of my Fauxhammer campaign sometimes in April. Session report is coming soon, but in the meanwhile, here is a glimpse into how I ruined the core system of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay! I have a rule of thumb for house rules: if the players don't forget to use it, then it's worth keeping, otherwise just throw it out. How we handle hit location and damage withstood this test, despite being poorly explained early on. Hopefully I will do a better job this time!

I fucking love hit locations in WFRP. Swapping the tens and units to get a number you can refer on the hit location chart is elegant. Alas I had two goals that forced me to defenestrate this classic solution: less rolling when making an attack and putting a bigger emphasis on choosing hit locations. Also, the front facing hit location tables are prone to giving nonsensical results, and fixing that would require either further hit location tables, or tampering with the numbers - and I'm too lazy to do either.

Damage: When you land a successful blow you don't roll damage die. You take the units instead, and add your damage bonuses to that. If the units die landed on 0, your damage is a 10, and you roll an additional d10. Each additional d10 also explodes in a similar way on 0. For example, if you hit someone with a roll of 18 while wielding a battle axe of +7 damage, your damage total is 15. If you hit someone with a roll of 20 and your additional dice lands on a 5, your damage total is 22.

Yeah, there is still a 10% chance you have to roll an additional die, and 1% chance that you have to roll two of them, but I'm okay with that. Rolling maximum damage already breaks the game's momentum, because everyone stops to cheer, and rolling an additional dice actually builds anticipation in this case.

Hit Location: Fasten your seatbelts, because we are getting dangerously close to narrative game territory here! When you make a successful test the tens of your result is your Success Level. When you fail a test your Success Level is -1 for every 10% you rolled above your success chance. Yes, we went with a blackjack method, where instead of rolling as low as possible, you have to get as close to your success chance as possible for better results. For example, if your success chance is 51%, a roll of 39 is a success with SL 3, while a roll of 71 is a failure with SL -2. SL 3 usually comes with some boon, while SL -3 is where the really bad things start to happen.

When attacking your foe, choose a hit location you can reach! If your SL is 3 or higher, you hit the targeted location. If your SL is less than 3, you hit the location your target chooses. Normally I allow chosing a location one step away from the targeted one - e.g. if you went for the head and rolled an SL of 2 only, your target can choose to put their left arm, torso, or right arm in harm's way. This option can become critical when someone starts taking criticals, since arm and leg criticals are usually less painful, than getting your skull cracked or gutted.

That's it. So far my players actually liked these changes, though wrapping their head around the alternative SL calculation took some time. Stay tuned for a session report in the near future, where our intrepid adventurers visits an old hag, meets a young feral druid, and kills a Fiend of Slaanesh - all in a day's work!

[Session] Fauxhammer S03E01: Back in the Saddle

Another excellent module overshadowed
by The Enemy Within.

On the 3rd of March I finally GMed my first session after almost two years of hiatus. While my son's arrival came in the middle of our Portals of Eremus campaign, I decided to keep that game on hold, and dust off our Zweihänder campaign instead, which took a pause because of the pandemic a few years earlier. Those who have been reading this blog for a while now might remember that I had some session reports for that campaign, but eventually discontinued writing them because they took more energy than I was willing to spend on them.

We has our 18th session behind us when the virus intervened, which marked the end of what we called "season 2". During the first season the party thwarted several skaven plans, had to leave Nuln as wanted criminals, and accidentally freed a daemon prince of Tzeentch. The second season started with them trying to tie up loose ends, which resulted in blowing up an entire quarter of Altdorf, waking up on a skaven train, and ending up in Tilea, which was invaded by a greenskin horde at the time. Thus began the party's long and weird way home...

Season 3 starts with the party returning to the Empire, with a warm up adventure using bits and pieces from the excellent Death's Dark Shadow. It's not only the scenery what changed: we also left Zweihänder behind in favour of my homebrew system Mordschlag¹, which I jotted down during the winter to have something that's much lighter than Zweihänder or WFRP4e, and works well with WFRP1e and WFRP2e stat blocks on the fly². I might talk about that later, but for now, onward to the session report!

Dramatis Personae

Blitzkrieg, dwarf veteran slayer: Half-deaf, naked, and in possession of a magical axe he fished out from the belly of the legendary Moby Squig. He is on his way to Altdorf to find the love of his life: the dwarf priestess Agonia.

Edgar, human [redacted]: The former monster slayer's skin turned black & white after a short trip to the Realms of Chaos, where he saw several of his clones crucified, was granted apocalyptic visions, and obtained an ominous sword. He is also followed by the black and white horse of a former chaos warrior.

Paether von Sternwart, human astromancer: Eager to get back to Altdorf, graduate as an archmage, and put his elven sword back into the daemon prince it was pulled out of.

Ruben Shultz, human mercenary captain: Downtrodden sylvanian noble on his way back home from a breatonnian trip. He firmly believes there are no vampires in Sylvania. New character.

Brünhilde, human hedge master: A huge burly woman with an addiction to mandrake. Alas she was pulled away early from the game to fulfill some motherly duties, but still deserves mention. New character.

Session Report

Let's throw a troll at them!
Aaand it's gone...

After orcs burned down Alimento and the party made a deal with some vampiresm they were finally on their way home on a strigani bargue. While still on the underwater river leading to the Empire, they learned that Altdorf is in turmoil: there is a huge hole in the city, the green mist billowing out of it is spreading sickness, a new extremist sigmarite cult is on the rise, Emperor Karl Franz is dying, and his son is missing.

Near the end of the journey Blitzkrieg and one of the sailors pulled up a stinky river troll along with the webs, who immediately attacked the group with a rusty anchor chained to its hand. He was one unlucky bastard... First a pot thrown at his head distracted, then Ruben threw an oil lamp in his face, then all his attacks were dodged or parried (though Ruben's sword shattered while parrying the  troll's anchor), and after getting critted by the dwarf he tried to jump back into the water, only to get torn apart by attacks of opportunity. Lazlo Lazlovicz, the captain, offered to pay the party's drinks in the Helmsman Inn once they are in Kreutzhofen.

Kreutzhofen was full of tileans, bretons, and refuges. They quickly learned the city is currently under the control of the pompous militia captain Bruno Trottel, who abuses some legal fuckery to announce martial law everytime there is something suspicious, which is a day or two later is revoked by the dorfrichter Sigismund Klippel - until Bruno discovers some new threat.

After buying suppliesthe party went to the Helmsman, except for Paether, who performed some divinations on the edge of the village. After getting some baleful visions he noticed a giggling girl running away and his daemon-slaying sword pulsing at his side. He lost the tracks, then heard a commotion across the street. It turned out a tilean syndicalista was brutally murdered and mutilated at the bridge, and Lazlo Lazlovits was found looting his corpse. Needless to say the strigani captain was beaten senseless and taken in by the militia.

In the Helmsman the party gathered some gossip while drinking herbal tea and schnaps with three old crones:

• The town was founded by the tyrannical Reichenbach family, whose last members burnt to death in their manor during a bandit attack many years ago. Some say the old Reichenbach lord is back as a vampire, murdering people.
• Whether there is a vampire or not, graves were dug up recently, and the third victim's scarf was found in the mud near the Reichenbach manor.
• The village has strong pagan ties. There have been no priests for a while now. Recently a teenage girl showed up in the nearby wilderness, whom many revere as a druidess.
• The pious believe the druidess is up to no good, and someone claimed she saw the girl near the house of the theologist Rudolf Furst.
• Rudolf Furst moved in recently from Altdorf and paid rent in advance for a year so he can perform his studies in peace. He is rarely seen and doesn't mingle with the locals.

At Rudolf Furst's house the party the dead tilean's missing genitalia at the doorstep. After pretending to be with the militia, Rudolf let them in for a drink. The theologist was absolutely clueless about what's going on. He didn't notice anything and the party didn't find anything interesting at his house - but at least Paether messed up casting Witch Sight, waking up all the animals and children in the vicinity as a side-effect³. Rudolf was eager to join the party on their way to Altdorf when they leave, because he has to do some paperwork at the university.

The ragtag hand of the law.

At the militia house Bruno explained this was the fourth murder in four months, and he needed to arrest someone to calm the people. Lazlo was in the village during the last murder, he is known to be on bad terms with the tileans, he used to walk around with a huge machete, and he was found right next to the corpse, so he was ideal for scapegoat. Other than the wounds being too brutal to be done by human there isn't much evidence in his favour, but those have yet to be examined. The local doctor, Jakob Entesang wasn't at home when the militia knocked on his door. The party can save Lazlo by providing evidence or doing a mission for Bruno... Magnus Richthofen, a local landlord, has been working on something in his barn and ordering all kinds of weird stuff. The last cargo he received was a crate of guns and gunpowder, which Bruno confiscated and used as an excuse to proclaim martial law. He is sure Richthofen is planning to incite a rebellion to take over the village.

After the chitchat with the militia, the adventurers visited the doctor's house. The Herr Entesang arrived soon on his couch along with his hunchback assistant, Igor. He said he was visiting an old patient in a nearby village and will check the mutilated corpse tomorrow. The party returned to the Helmsman, discussing what should they do tomorrow.

Big thank you to Paether's player, who took and shared his session notes. Maybe I should do the same for his next Call of Cthulhu session...

¹ Might be temporary title. I wanted to go with Mordhau, but that's already taken.

² One of my biggest mechanical issues with Zweihänder is how it handles characteristics and bonuses. Conversion isn't hard, but it takes some effort, and isn't much fun if you have dozens of stat blocks.

³ It's a pity he didn't roll the big brother of this effect, which makes the nearby animals and children so angry they will seek out and attack the wizard.

[Kickstarter] Keep Trollin'

This dude was love at first sight.

Last year I only managed to finish three miniatures, but that didn't keep my pile of shame from growing. I find it hard to resist well sculpted Oldhammer miniatures. I'm a sucker for tiny pieces of metal that effortlessly blend dark fantasy aesthetics with comically exaggerated features. And since I'm preparing for an Oldhammerish campaign, painting them enjoys a higher priority than before.

Satanic Panic Miniatures is one of the projects I gushed about before. Mark Hides does a great job at touching forgotten and unique topics, like greater gnolls, lesser goblins, or giants, and finding the right sculptors and manufactures to make them come alive. I'm bringing him up because he started a new Kickstarter campaign just recently for 28mm scale old-school trolls. Big bulky trolls, with huge ass heads, and charming smiles. What's not to love about them? And I only have one Reaper Bones troll and one Tim Prow Heartbreaker troll painted! I cannot let our troll slayer, Blitzkrieg down! I'm sure he would find death by a dozen or so trolls climactic and satisfying. This is also a good opportunity to grab some of the lesser goblins and giants until the Satanic Panic Miniatures webstore is available online again.

Mark is well worth supporting, he is devoted to his hobby, has a no-bullshit attitude, and he delivered everything he promised so far. He also has some more intriguing projects in his pipeline - like steppe dwarves and orcs. If you are interested in it, I recommend following his facebook page.

[Musings] Back in Black

Welcome to a different, darker shade of the Simple Blogger theme. It's probably the most overused theme, but I guarantee it will be better for your eyes when you open up the Vorpal Mace blog from your phone in the middle of the night.

Summer is on the loose, and it got pretty serious here this year. I already got a T-shirt tan just from walking to work, and the temperature within the flat goes easily above 30 °C if we aren't careful. Summers is also expensive. Even if we don't travel anywhere with the kid arriving in two weeks, there are some Kickstarters and new releases to drain your funds.

A few familiars from the first Rise of the Minons Kickstarter.
Don't hang out with wizards who have friends like these.

Even if I had to put my Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay preparations on hold, I can't say no to the next Dunkeldorf Kickstarter campaign: The Kingpin of Dunkeldorf. I'm not here for the thugs though (except for Lenny, he is a musthave), but for the witch hunters and mutants. While there are some great witch hunter and mutant minis available from other Oldhammer manufacturers, their numbers are still dwarfed compared to the variety in greenskin and dwarves.

Paul Smith of Creative Sculpt Studio has barely finished his Random Dungeon Encounters! campaign, he is already pushing another project forward, called Rise of the Minions 2! I have the entire lineup from the first batch, and they are some absolutely characterful little buggers that are a joy to paint. This is also a good opportunity to get some of his earlier sculpts. I was thinking about sitting this one out, because Paul said he has plans for champions of Order (a true niche among Oldhammer manufacturers), but that modron, mini-Cthulhu, and demon fish are hard to resist. Also, another Moonfaced Horror! You can't have enough Moonfaced Horrors!

Goodman Games also started their long-awaited DCC Dying Earth Kickstarter campaign. While I absolutely adore Vance's work and have high hopes that Goodman Games will do justice to the source material (just look at the contents of The Primer of Practical Magic: curses, manse-building, magical associations!), $50 with shipping will be a bit much for now. I'll be the first in line when it comes out next September, though.

And as usual, Venger is back again, with Cha'alt After Dark, going full R-rated with the sleazy stuff. What's more interesting for me though is that he got his hands on Encounter Critical, the best garage-made science-fiction fantasy rpg from 1979 (published in 2006). Cha'alt conversion with cheap black & white illustrations and typewriter text when?

The most important OSR news (probably of the year) has absolutely nothing to do with Kickstarters though. In fact, one of the best thing about it is that you don't have to risk your money on a Kickstarter campaign, and wait months or years to get the final product. Helvéczia - Melan's picaresque fantasy RPG - is available, right now. You can get it as a hefty boxed set, or a single rulebook. 

That's all for now. Some unknown guy called Unknown asked for some DCC RPG resources in the comment section of my last post, which were lost when I rebooted the blog in 2016. Expect some of those soonish.

Satanic Panic's Great Gnolls

No trace of hyena DNA here.

One little bit of detail that made me raise an eyebrow when first reading the Monsters & Treasures booklet of Original Dungeons & Dragons was the description of gnolls: "A cross between Gnomes and Trolls (. . . perhaps, Lord Dunsany did not really make it all that clear) with +2 morale.".[1] After knowing them as hyena men for years I found this paragraph more than amusing, especially with the included illustration, which shows them as some crouching goblinoid.

Since the release of the AD&D 1st edition Monster Manual the hyena-headed humanoid became the widespread design for gnolls, and I recall very few examples that deviated from them. One of them was Citadel's FTG Fantasy Tribes Gnolls line, where similar to OD&D's Monsters & Treasures the gnolls were big goblinoids. The line was later renamed to FTG Fantasy Tribes Goblins, and finally became C12 Great Goblins.

This April Satanic Panic Miniatures ran a Kickstarter campaign to release its Great Gnoll line - a bunch of multi-part old-school miniatures inspired by the classic gnolls/great goblins. The campaign was successful, and the figurines are available for sale on the SPM website. A few months ago during a sale I bought two sets, which collected dust until two weeks ago. Despite my aversion towards multi-part miniatures, I had a lot of fun already with these little bastards, and I'm nowhere near finished! I spent a copious amount of time figuring out how to combine the various parts, gluing them together, coming up with the color schemes, et cetera. Alas this project is on hold now, for I ran out of bases, which probably won't arrive in the next two weeks (thanks Brexit).

Crossbow gnoll looks so excited to get primed,
 longsword gnoll not so much.

The minis have separate heads, torsoes, shields, and weapons. While the bodies within a set are identical, the heads are all distinct and characterful - my favorite being the one with the chubby cheeks and buck teeth. For some strange reason there are only three shields for four minis, but the weapons more than compensate for that, because there is a crapton of them. Preparing the great gnolls wasn't hard. There were plenty of flashes to cut down, but none of them were problematic, and the seamlines were few and far between. Be careful with the weapons though! They are a bit fragile, I managed to break a sword while trying to force it into a great gnoll's hand. The "great" part in their name is no joke, they are pretty tall for goblinoids - they are a bit shorter  than my Frostgrave characters, and taller than my Heartbreaker Kev Adams orcs.

Not sure what these charming fellows will be at my table. I might introduce them as "true" gnolls into Old School Essentials, or use them as great goblins in Zweihänder. It's also possible I'll use them as hobgoblins until I find better minis for that - although SPM has some intriguing plans for them too. Speaking of which, SPM has another Kickstarter campaign running as I post this to produce a bunch of multi-part great gnoll boar riders. There are only a few days left, and it's almost funded. If you are not interested in mounted units or you want some footmen too, you can add the original infantry packs and their C variants to the pledge.

A finished great gnoll in classic D&D hobgoblin colours.

[1] Interestingly the Lord Dunsany story the author refers to is How Nuth Would Have Practised His Art upon the Gnoles from Book of Wonders, and doesn't have any description of its titular gnoles. In Margaret St. Clair's The Man Who Sold Rope to the Gnoles one of they are likened to an artichoke, and have tentacles instead of arms.

Beasts of Chaos!! Kickstarter Launched

Why buy a regular minotaur when you can get one
with a fucking drill arm?!

In July I had an interview with Paul Smith of Creative Sculpt Studio about his second Kickstarter campaign called The Bigger Hordes of Chaos!!!, where he was gathering money to expand his line of Oldhammer chaos warrior miniatures. The campaign not only succeeded, but the rewards arrived in time. I love them all, they are characterful sculpts that are fun to work with, so it's needless to say, even with my ever growing backlog of unpainted figurines I was eagerly waiting for the next line.

The third Kickstarter campaign called the Beasts of Chaos!! just launched this week. I'm not sure why there is one less exclamation mark in the title - heck, there should be at least four, because it's a more ambitious project than the earlier ones. This time Paul wants to introduce a bunch of misshapen monsters into the hordes of Chaos - hounds, beastmen, minotaurs, slugs, and even a Jabberwocky. Some of these are pretty big, and thus only available in resin, unless we cough up enough money to cover the cost of metal moulds.

If you are looking for quality, hand-sculpted, old-school miniatures for your Warhammer FRP or Zweihänder sessions, I recommend checking out the campaign.

My humble attempt at painting the Cavalier from
The Bigger Hordes of Chaos!!! in the colours of Tzeentch.

[Interview] Paul Smith About Sculpting and the Ever-Growing Hordes of Chaos!!!

The Ultimate Chaos Hero!

A few months ago in an Oldhammer group I ran into a nicely painted miniature of Kaleb Daark, the forgotten badass champion of the forgotten badass Chaos God Malal. At first I thought it was an ancient Citadel mini I haven’t seen before, but as it turned out it was a custom sculpt made by the talented Paul Smith of Creative Sculpts / Dark Hollow Miniatures. He already had a small but successful Kickstarter campaign called The Hordes of Chaos!!! that helped him start a line of Chaos Champions, and is running his second campaign called The Bigger Hordes of Chaos!!! to expand the line, which will end in a few days. Since Paul seemed to be keen on answering questions and talking about his work, I thought I should ask him for an interview.

When did you get involved with miniatures?

I started to kitbash tanks and jet plane airfix models when I was about 8 years old - painted them gold and silver enamels to look sci-fi... It was the 70s everything was in white or silver and looked sterile.

I started collecting miniatures when my Nan took me out for the day (we lived in Balham SW 12) to a shop in Hammersmith - and I bought my first miniature: a pre-slotta dwarf. It was so grey, I painted everything back then in enamels. I went on to buy a Chaos Dwarf Bazooka Team, and then saved, and bought more and more when I could.

How did you get into tabletop gaming?

I didn’t start tabletop gaming until last year when I bought HeroQuest. I absolutely love the ease of game mechanics, although now we are all thinking about adding new characters, and rules, and working out some level progression for our existing characters. It’s just loads of fun, my family and friends love playing it, and we usually make an evening of it with drinks and nibbles - £120 well spent! In fact I love playing it so much that I commissioned someone to make me £300 worth of dungeon tiles and buildings that I’m painting up (slowly as time allows)

So you got into minis without the influence of any wargames, rpgs, or other games, do I understand that correctly?

Yes, I always enjoyed drawing and painting as a kid - loved fantasy and sci-fi. My dream job as a child was to be able to make monster like I saw in the Ray Harryhausen movies like Sinbad, Jason and the Argonauts, Star Wars (obviously!), Alien - these fuelled my imagination so much I wanted to have my own creatures. I started collecting White Dwarf magazine and loved all the fluff/backstories to the scenarios and the painted minis . As far as gaming went I didn’t know anyone else that was into it at that age and I moved around a lot for the next years - from London to Bournemouth to the middle of nowhere in country village.

When did you start sculpting?

When I was 11. My first mini that I made was a “slime monster”! With a spear! It was made out of Blu Tack and the spear was a cocktail stick... I painted it green with black shade and a mix of white and green for highlights ... all in enamels. I was super chuffed with it until a few days later, and then the paint started peeling off it ... Then along comes WD and someone in it mentioned Milliput, and how you could stipple it to make grass and also make mushrooms.

Bugs Bunny after a few months of warpstone diet.

When did you start freelancing?

Well, I did paint miniatures for money as a teen for the very small group of fellow teens that collect minis as well - I had also by this point started doing conversions and making full scale dioramas. Just before I turned 17 a friend in Bournemouth contacted me and asked if I wanted to move down there and sculpt miniatures with him and a mate - which I jumped at!

So I grabbed my backpack and moved down there. It was a small company run out of an old school house on a private estate in Winterbourne/Dorset. The owners didn’t charge rent, just wanted a collection of the miniatures we made. I sculpted a few minis and learnt how to cast, clean up, and paint resin casts for sale in shops all over the country and for festivals - Glastonbury festival being one of them and the Dorset steam fair being another. Our stuff was very influenced by the art of Rackham/Froud/Lee - all of which were big influences as well as 2000AD artists, Simon Bisley, Rodney Matthews, Roger Dean, Vallejo, Frazetta, Blanche....

Also, strictly speaking my mates couldn’t actually afford to pay me, so they subsidised my rent in the bedsit and I sold reject models at the weekend to make some cash to live on

You mention in your Kickstarter profile that you took a break for 27 years. Why did you leave the hobby, and how did you rediscover it?

Unfortunately my mate’s company suffered a bit of a blow - the person doing the accounts was draining money out of it on “expenses”, which is why we never seemed to see much of a profit and it came to an unhappy split - my mate was so upset by it that he stopped trading . I went back to where I used to live, met a girl, got married, had kids - broke up a few years later - time just seemed to fly by and I just didn’t really get back into it. Getting a “real job”, paying bills, and spending time with my kids became my priority when I got married and stayed my priority ever since. My kids moved in with me 14 years ago and they are now grown and flown the coop.

So I rediscovered the hobby a few years ago. I was doing my first ever further education course learning to become a therapist at Southampton university - half way through my 3 year course a series of unfortunate events happened - my mum passed away, my brother had been diagnosed as mentally ill, and some other things that I don’t wish to get into happened to my family that resulted in me taking a break for a while. I found myself feeling creative and a need to do something that made me happy, so entered the Milliput! Started sculpting again and loved it, great way to focus and relax from the things I couldn’t change (from a therapists point of view). I went back to my course and did it for another 6 months and couldn’t stand it anymore. I spoke to my tutor and he said that so many people join the course and then “find themselves” doing it without realising. He said that “of the 21 in the class - by the end of the 3 year course - only 5-7 will actually finish.”

So I left the course and looked into making miniatures - and was bowled over by the amount of talent and that the the community had grown so much! I decided to practice getting better at sculpting for a year before going the whole nine yards and asking peeps to pay me. I’d done it before. So essentially after everything that happened I guess I just realised I’d spent most my life doing what was needed, expected and wanted of me only to realise that life really is too short, and now I have an opportunity to do what I always wanted - which was to make monsters and stuff and took the plunge as it were

Wasn’t the abundance of sculptors and miniature projects threatening?

No, I thoroughly enjoyed looking at other peeps work. Obviously it makes people happy (like myself) and I don’t really see it as competitive, but I suspect some do unfortunately - the mini sculptors and small businesses can be quite “cliquey” and competitive as other businesses and industries. It’s not something that really interests me. I do my job because “I” love it, if other people do too that’s great, and I do appreciate their support, but essentially I’m doing it for my reasons.

Are there any particular projects or lines you like and support?

Recently I’ve loved getting some of Hasslefree Miniatures stuff - I recently went to Salute and bought loads for future projects.... They will get painted as well as my 2000 point Skaven army... I quite like a lot of other sculptors in the OSG and also in the Shiflett Brothers Forum . But at the moment organising my first couple of KS’s, tweeting, a webstore, sculpting commissions, painting minis, and running the campaign on 3 different media platforms doesn’t leave me much time at the moment! Hopefully, over time I will get used to running it all and have more time to devote to other projects

Do you have a favorite sculptor or painter?

No - there’s too many to choose from! I like a lot of sculptors for their ideas that they bring, regardless of “perceived” skill - as for painters well I’ll always be a fan of John Blanche’s techniques. Ana Polanscak does great minis too, but I also like fun, colourful paint jobs too and there are lots of good painters - David Stafford is one. There’s a few others but I can’t remember the names at present.

A chaotic cast of new minis, only the Usurper is missing.

What's the difference between Creative Sculpt Studio and Dark Hollow Miniatures? 

When I started out I just intended to be a commission sculptor, hence the name “Creative Sculpt Studio Ltd”. As time went on I had lots and lots of ideas of things that I thought would be awesome to sculpt and have as minis to paint (not a lot of everyday hobbyists can afford sculpts). The idea of selling my own miniatures to people sounded “wrong” with the old name, so I came up with a new one just for the miniatures - so, essentially I’m still Creative Sculpt Studio Ltd (for the sculpting) and Dark Hollow Miniatures is trade mark of CSS Ltd and gives a bit of a background for the minis live in - like Citadel was for GW. Plans change and I’ve loved making my own ideas so far.

Your miniatures are very characterful. Where do you draw inspiration from? Do you have a story or background for them?

Thank you! Usually I read a fair bit and get most of my ideas from books (I have a fair few WH novels), my favourites being “Ignorant Armies” and the older GW books Warhammer Armies. I tend to get an idea of how something looks and feels in my head quite easily - by that I mean I can see it and get a general vibe that I want to convey. Then sometimes I will do a sketch (which speeds up the process quite considerably), but most of the time I just do it straight out of my head. Although I have done a couple of “fan sculpts” I tend not to copy anybody’s else’s ideas, I have plenty of my own. It’s easier to sculpt something fast if half the work has been done and you have the reference material in front of you to work from.

But, I digress! I enjoy making up stories for my miniatures, it puts them firmly into context for the “viewer” and it just makes the work more fun to look at and brings it to life.

Artistically a lot of my influences come from the artwork of famous artists Rackham, Froud, Frazetta, Vallejo, Bisley, Blanche and Miller (there’s definitely more). The odd movie is a good source of inspiration sometimes. One of my favourite movie makers (apart from George Lucas and Spielberg) is Guillermo del Toro - Hellboy (I & II, not that travesty... Hellboy III) - he has a unique and wonderful imagination, and some of his sci-fi stuff too.

How much time to do you spend on average on sculpting a mini? Which one was the most fun to work with?

Ooh, difficult question! Greatly depends on the complexity, size, and whether or not it’s getting cast or just a private one-off. I’ve managed to sculpt an entire mini in 3 hours (see below), and loved it, very fun. Some of my bigger sculpts have taken weeks - and I loved doing them too. I don’t really have a favourite one, I tend to (if I have the time nowadays) to set myself goals of doing something for the first time - getting hands right (can be a pain) - doing an anatomy study because people actually look different to how you imagine them to be. Scales on dragons, making wings, all need to be done for the first time if you’re self-taught. I have the most fun, I think, sculpting my own ideas. But I do also get some really fun commissions too. My average time is about a day for a standard generic posed mini, sometimes I’ll do 3 in a day and a half. But it is very dependent on details, pose and size - the bigger it is, the more care you take with it, the more time it takes.

A few of my personal sculpts - the “speed” sculpts are the Warlock and Hag (middle top, top right) the blind cave troll is one of my favourites and the Draugr with the spear was my first 28mm sculpt I made after I got proper glasses for work. And the Chaos Marine was just because I’d never sculpt any sci-fi yet

The Hordes of Chaos are steadily growing. What's next? Are we looking forward to even more Chaos, or you have plans to explore other Oldhammer themes?

Yes more Chaos is on the way! This morning I made armatures for sculpts (11 more) 5 Beast-Men, a couple of hounds, 3 Minotaurs, and an abomination. The Chaos Minotaur Standard Bearer is already cast, I’m using a couple of the casts to convert into new and interesting Minotaurs - Minions and familiars are on the way, as well as war machines. But I also have s bunch of “randoms” that I want to release too, but we’ll have to see how the timetable goes before I can say when.

Can't wait to see more of them. Thank you for taking your time to answer my questions!

If you want to know more about the sculpts visit the Creative Sculpt Studio Ltd. website, the Creative Sculpt Studio facebook page, or the Dark Hollow Miniatures facebook group. You can also still support the The Bigger Hordes of Chaos!!! Kickstarter campaign to get both the previous, and forthcoming minis.

[Interview] Nicki Irmark talks about Dunkeldorf Miniatures

A blood moon rises upon Dunkeldorf heralding
the doom which comes to my wallet.

The Oldhammer movement is basically old-school Warhammer's equivalent of the OSR: its goal is to revive interest in classic Warhammer games and keep their spirit alive. Old miniatures can be hard to come buy and are expensive, so to fulfill the needs of the community dozens of manufacturers jumped the bandwagon and flooded the market with excellent figurines following the classic style. There are orks, goblins, daemons, goblins, chaos dwarves, and goblins galore! I'm not a wargamer though. I'm a roleplayer, who runs a Zweihänder campaign, and plays in a WFRP4e campaign. I don't need dozens of goblins, but on the other hand I need minis for rat catchers, stumbling drunkards, filthy whores, dirty peasants. Of course I can buy generic renaissance and medieval commoners, but most of them are nowhere as characterful as Citadel's 1987 Villagers, 1987 Travelling Players, or Mordheim frenzied mob.

Enter Dunkeldorf Miniatures, a Denmark-based initiative that was meant to satisfy the hunger for Oldhammer townsfolk. The team consists of Nicki Irmark and Nana Kronmark of King Games, the illustrator Mustafa Bekir of Spevna Studio, and the sculptor Sonny Bundgaard from Imitation of Life Miniatures. Their first Kickstarter campaign will begin on the 5th of March and plans to bring the inhabitants of Dunkeldorf to life in form of 28mm white metal miniatures.

The project was near and dear to me from the first time I heard about it. Last week I took the opportunity to ask some questions from Nicki about Dunkeldorf and the people behind it.

When and how did you get involved in tabletop gaming?

I believe I was 10 years old, and my parents, my sister and a friend of mine were attending a yearly event in my hometown, it was basically just all the businesses being open until midnight, along with a lot of street events. So my friend and me were perusing the different stores and got into a store that sold hobby supplies. In the middle of the room they had set up a table with Warhammer Fantasy Battles. It was the 5th Edition, Bretonnia vs. Lizardmen. I get so nostalgic when looking at the box art!. Both me and my friend were immediately hooked, we both bought the box along with a paint set. We spent all the money we had saved up for the evening, and just wanted to go back home to look at it! Later that same evening I painted my first miniature, a Chaos Warrior that was included in the paint set. It looked horrible, but I thought it looked pretty good back then! ;) I've been into miniatures (Primarily fantasy) ever since!

What games besides WHFB5e had a big impact on you? What do you play nowadays?

When thinking back, I believe HeroQuest had the biggest impact on me. I played it a lot with a friend who owned it, but I never actually got it myself. I loved all the dungeons accessories and of course the miniatures. I believe that has carried over for me when playing RPGs, I can't imagine playing without terrain, dungeon accessories and miniatures.

I haven't really had that same "wow" feeling with a board game, until recently when Nana, my wife and me received Gloomhaven. What a thrill it was to open that box and play the game! Nana and I play a bunch of co-op board games. But we mostly enjoy playing RPGs. We've been playing WFRP, Pathfinder, and D&D.

WFRP has always been our favourite, we love the setting and for the last couple of years we've been playing with our own homemade ruleset. We're gearing up to play 4th edition now though – We haven't started our campaign yet as we're finishing up a D&D campaign and also spending a lot of time working on Dunkeldorf!

Five of the twelve Dunkeldorf miniatures posing for a group shot.

Seeing the Dunkeldorf minis the influence of WFRP is obvious. But where does the idea of Dunkeldorf come from? Was it a place you used before in rpgs, or was it created from scratch for your miniature line?

We're definitely influenced by WFRP. Nana and I have talked a lot about having our own line of miniatures, for several years actually. And we have always talked about the lack of "modern" WFRP townsfolk. There's a lot of Oldhammer/Citadel townsfolk, some really awesome miniatures that we also have in our collection. Unfortunately they're extremely expensive to buy nowadays, as they're no longer in production, many of them are recasts and finally, they're pretty small compared to newer miniatures. So, we decided if we ever do move forward with our own line, we wanted to create townsfolk/rpg miniatures that could be used in WFRP and of course other fantasy settings as well.

We have never had an actual town in our campaign called Dunkeldorf. But most of the characters, the Dunkeldorf background story and the character stories – All of that is straight out of our own campaign! (And it all takes a pretty grim turn all of a sudden, something we'll hopefully get to explore and share in future Kickstarters!)

Bertha the Rat Catcher and
 her large but grumpy cat. 

You mention having your own line of minis was a long time dream of yours. You had to gather your party before venturing forth, though! How did you meet and get Sonny Bundgaard and Mustafa Bekir on board?

Nana and I knew Sonny through the work with our shop, King Games. We knew that Sonny had some sculpting experience and knew a bit about the casting process as well. When we talked to Sonny about our upcoming project, it was mainly to pick his brain, ask his advice and such. But as we talked more and more, it became clear that Sonny was pretty hooked on the project and we started talking about him doing the sculpting work. And now I can't imagine not having him on board, he has really captured the essence of what we imagined, and we're continually impressed by his work.

After we had Sonny on the team, we needed sketches for him to work from. Nana and I had already envisioned that Dunkeldorf should be more than just a line of miniatures. We wanted the stories and we wanted proper artwork, not just quick sketches. We felt that we needed to find a person that had the same kind of passion for these sort of characters as us. So the obvious choice was an Oldhammer guy. Lo and behold, Mustafa's artwork popped up in my Facebook feed from The Oldhammer Artwork FB group. I contacted Mustafa, and he was crazy about the project. And not only did we get some awesome artwork from Mustafa, we also got a very nice, helpful and talented person to be a part of the project. He has been a large driving force behind the project with a ton of ideas and input.

We're really excited to have both of these talented guys on the team, and we hope to continue working with them on Dunkeldorf in the future. :)

What would you like to do after the inhabitants? Monsters? Adventurers? Something else?

Well, we have a lot of ideas. But things can still change. So… The thing that makes Dunkeldorf special, is that a sort of supernatural event happens every year, a moon eclipse (a Blood Moon) and it can only be seen in Dunkeldorf and the surrounding area. This event attracts a lot of visitors and astronomers and such. The town has a yearly festival celebrating the event. The Dunkeldorf stories (and the RPG Source Book we plan on making in the future) take place during this festival. Did I mention that we're big fans of Shadows over Bogenhafen? Everything seems to be going just dandy, until the Blood Moon continues to linger in the sky, night after night. Weird things start happening in Dunkeldorf, many of the townsfolk start acting different.

So, as we see it, the first Kickstarter is how things are when the festival begins. Our plan for the second Kickstarter (Hopefully the first is a success so the second one is possible!) is with a focus on the actual festival. Entertainers and such, still with a focus on townsfolk, but with the introduction of some of the weird stuff that's starting to happen in Dunkeldorf. There's several villains and villain-like characters in our story of course, and many of these are easily corrupted by the Blood Moon. So, some of these characters could possibly show up as mutants or cultists. While some of the "heroes" could show up in combat poses. Erika for example, a former soldier stuck in a smithy, day-dreaming about swinging her Zweihander again. And! Then we have the surrounding area. Lots of stuff happening just outside of Dunkeldorf as well. So yea, we have a lot of ideas for the future. But, one step at a time. Our first priority is to make our first Kickstarter a success! :)

Regarding monsters, they're not a high priority for us, as we feel like there's a lot of those to choose from on the market. We love the minis from Knightmare Miniatures for example, they would fit right in with our miniatures. There's also The OS Miniatures Company and their Circus of Corruption. And of course many others!

A finely sculpted halfling, alas
without sausage in his hands.

What kind of sourcebook can you imagine about Dunkeldorf?

The sourcebook would be a book that any GM/DM in a fantasy group could pick up and have a ready-made town along with the area surrounding it. It would contain lots of adventure hooks, maps, artwork, rumours, minor encounters/jobs and an adventure/campaign. All the characters will of course be featured in the book, so those that play with miniatures can pull out the real Dunkeldorf townsfolk/NPCs/characters and use them for their sessions if they wish.

We obviously have a lot of love for WFRP, but we want to make sure that Dunkeldorf fits into most fantasy settings. So we decided early on not to include blackpowder weapons for example. But we'll make a lot of things open, so it's easy for the GM to add his own stuff, but not so open that you necessarily need a ton of planning.

That sounds like something right up in my alley! How is the gaming community in Denmark by the way? What games are popular?

Glad to hear that! I have to admit that I'm not an expert on what is the most popular any longer. But we have a bunch of great hobby/gaming stores in Denmark where players can meet up and play. Games Workshop is still very popular here and I think that GW games take the crown as to what is played the most. I feel like there's many RPG'ers in Denmark as well though, but they tend to be a bit more "secretive/not noticeable" as they're mostly playing at home and not in a club/store (some are of course!).

How big is the interest in Dunkeldorf there?

There's definitely interest! We've gotten really good feedback so far and it's so great to know that other gamers are into the project we're working on! We have also talked to a few Danes who don't even have a particular and immediate use for the miniatures, but they plan on backing the Kickstarter anyway just to support us and a Danish line of miniatures. That's such an awesome feeling to know that. :)

I think this will be kind of a "Sophie's choice" for you... Which is your favorite Dunkeldorf miniature so far and why?

I love Old Tully! The character is based on a crazy beggar from our own WFRP campaign. And I really wanted to do an homage to Ian Anderson from Jethro Tull (if you can call it that, taking the end result into consideration!). So he's this sort of creepy guy, lurking around the streets (in dark alleyways and such) just waiting for his chance to jump out and scare unsuspecting townsfolk, he'll then almost stalk them, playing his flute loudly right next to them until they give him a coin or two.

I've also grown very fond of Haelga, the town watch captain, who originates from the far north (viking type) and has a hard time letting her past go. I think the sculpt by Sonny has turned out so great. And the end result is a very unique miniature.

Okay, final question! What would you do if one morning you woke up in Dunkeldorf?

If I woke up in Dunkeldorf, I'd probably try to get on the Burgomeister's good side. With him in power I'd never feel safe if I wasn't! But then again, even if you're on his good side you may not be totally safe. Might be best to actually just get the hell out of there! ;)

Thank you for taking your time to answer my questions, and good luck with the Kickstarter!

If you want to know more about the project visit dunkeldorf.eu or the official Dunkeldorf Miniatures facebook page.

Update: The Kickstarter campaign has started, and is already funded!

You can't have proper Oldhammer feel without pop culture references.