More involved with the Narrative community!

Today I give some explanations why most of the action of this blog has manifested mostly on Twitter as of late, and less here. Lots of projects and things have been moving in the background, and I finally have some time to line them out here.


I have started getting more involved with the NEON (Narrative Event Organizer Network): with content production, such as a podcast and social media engagement, as well as working on Narrative Events and rules with my fellow Organizers.
The goal is to promote Narrative Gaming in the Warhammer tabletop gaming community, which has been the purpose of this blog all along :D

So what is the NEON?

Narrative Event Organizer Network

• Decentralized community of Age of Sigmar gamers and event organizers
• Inspire players to embrace Narrative Play in Age of Sigmar;
• Share a collective fountain of knowledge & resources; 
• Encourage more Narrative Events by encouraging more NEOs (Narrative Event Organizers)!

https://wearetheneon.com/

In the website you can find lots of resources: tips to run your own events, tricks for organizing your games and managing players, event rules packs and interviews with other organizers.
Members and 'alumni' of NEON have organized several Global Narrative events, and have counted on the involvement of some of the best hobbyists and Narrative organizers out there in the community.

If you have heard of Realms at War (UK), The NOVA Open Grand Narrative (US east coast), the Holy Wars/Holy Havoc events (US midwest), the Gibbering Dome at Adepticon (US east coast), or Warhammer Achievements (UK), that is where you see Narrative Play at their biggest!

But there are many, MANY other Narrative Events out there.
Most are run locally, with an organizer's small group, and they are all scattered around the world: you just need to find the closest to you. But often they are only talked about in whispered tones, almost unheard of...
It's time people are aware: NARRATIVE PLAYERS ARE OUT THERE! (and we are... legion?)

And you can join us.

We have a podcast on Youtube!

The Filthy Casual NEON podcast

Me and Aaron Bostian go over the many narrative events played in the Age of Sigmar, throughout the world, to give players a taste of what narrative play can be like.

What cool experiences the NEOs are creating for their players, what special rules they use, and what fantastical terrain they deploy on their tables.
We also interview NEOs and narrative players, several of which have given the community amazing contributions over the past 5 years.

This is our latest episode:

How do I play narrative games? What are the guidelines?

Bill Castello (NEO, and producer/co-host of Rolling Bad podcast) has compiled a great series of articles explaining how to approach narrative games: what freedoms do you have in narrative play, how to cooperate with other players in creating narrative, how to resolve competitive disputes vs engaging in the story, and much more!

How to play narrative games (click here)

If you need something shorter to share with your fellow players, here's a little page I cooked up!

Update on Mordheim: The Enemy Within

Thanks to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, this piece of news is not as exciting, as it may have to be postponed indefinitely. But, if things look up and the world returns to more of a normal...

I will be running a Mordheim 2-day event at the NOVA Open, in Arlington VA, USA.

"The Enemy Within" is a Mordheim narrative campaign, set in The Empire of Sigmar in the Old World, with a lot of political intrigue, bandit hunting and cultists! Cultists everywhere! This narrative event will be a showcase of the new campaign, and a celebration of the longevity of the cult game that is Mordheim! This event will happen across 2 days, consisting of 4 game sessions, with multiplayer scenarios in the evenings, the last night being a grand finale.

Tickets (click here).

Depending on how much the world returns to normal, and conventions start running normally again, I will be able to run Mordheim at other events as well, here in the US east coast. To be confirmed.

The Enemy Within is still in development. It has taken a bit of a slowdown in the past couple of years, but thanks to confidence and support from community members I am redoubling my efforts to finish the ruleset for everyone to enjoy.

**********

That's it for now.
Roll high and prosper!

Age of Sigmar narrative event: The Flamescar Vaults

So... in the past year I ran TWO Age of Sigmar Narrative events at Alpha Omega Hobby, our local shop in the Boston area, that I had yet to share here.

The first one was last June: a small-squads dungeon crawl using the Forbidden Power and Firestorm rules. Particularly, it was amazing to see how a little bit of hobbying, even on a low budget, can go a long way.

I finally finished polishing up the players pack for the event, and the gaming aids I used to run it, so I can finally share them here.

• The Flamescar Vaults - Event rules pack
• The Flamescar Vaults - Battleplans, Item Cards and Gaming aids

I had in mind to run a small-squads type of event for Age of Sigmar for a while, that would be bigger than Skirmish, but still explored all the nooks and crannies of the scenery and got players down to fulfill narrative missions on the table.

I called it Gangs of Hammerhal, and cooked up a format on how to build your army with these restrictions.

The goals with this format were:

- To promote faster games, because you have less units in the table;

- To need less space on the table for models so that scenery can be denser and players can interact with it more;

- To emphasize the heroics of small units of elite models and Heroes;

- To promote use of "veteran" upgrades from battle to battle, such as Path to Glory and Regiments of Renown (now featured in Generals Handbook 2019!).

With the release of Forbidden Power, and the storyline of exploring forgotten dungeons full of traps and treasure, I knew I had found the right time to run this.

I put my Terraclips and other dungeon terrain at our local shop to work.

The story:

The event placed players as one of the many groups of mercenaries, treasure-hunters and secret operatives working out of the larger Hammerhal area in Aqshy. The Commander of each of these groups had already grabbed one of the greater relics from the Stormvaults: an Awakened Artefact.

They all set out to find the entrance to the Cloister of Ashes, a Grand Stormvault deep beneath Hammerhal. Given that the city's watch had tried to seal all entrances to the vault within its perimeters, the warbands were invested in finding an alternative route. This is what led them to investigate the smaller Vaults in the Flamescar Plateau.

The setting:

The Flamescar Plateau was the setting of the Firestorm map campaign, and I had always wanted to make more use of all its rules and backstory. In particular how the ancient Agloraxi mages built giant Golems at their facility, to help forge arcane machinery from the heat of a realmstone elemental. The lore of the Dread Solstice campaign even mentioned a Chronomantic magic cannon being built within the Infinity Gears, the arcane computer the size of a city found north of the plateau. I definitely had to put something like this on the table at some point!

So I got to work and did some budget hobbying, to set up the Infinity Gears, the Caverns of Fulminax, the Magebane Dungeons, and other locations featured in the Firestorm campaign map.

The Caverns of Fulminax table featured an actual realmstone elemental (a large magma head!) whose rage could blow up your models if they were close enough.
This table of red cliffs and wooden bridges was already owned by our shop, but nobody used it because it's not a conventional table size!! I decided to put to good use.
The Fulminax head is a halloween rubber mask, that I painted with a few washes of orange in recesses, and balloon within it for volume.. The giant chains are more Halloween decorations. 

The Infinity Gears table had actual giant gears that interfered with the flow of time, and was plagued by wandering remnants of The Red Mist that plagued Aqshy during the Time of Tribulations.
The walls on this table are part of a 40k/necromunda/spaceHulk modular system. I added up the paper board included in one of the old AoS starter sets, which includes the Arcanabulum gears (very suitable for the Infinity Gears), as well as several sets of painted gears. These were a mix of metal gears (probably from bikes), large wooden gears and a few mini metal geary bits that are used for hobbying and steampunk jewelry.

At the Titanworks, warbands had to collect parts for a Golem and build it (which they then needed to use, to forge a key at the Forge of the Fulminax!).
I used a Full Metal Alchemist model to represent the Agloraxian Titan, which I wanted to do for ages! It is even made up of many pieces, so players would have to collect them across the table and assemble. But surely one could use a 40K titan or other giant robot as an arcane Golem for this purpose.

How it worked:

Warbands were introduced to "quests", or potential leads to where they might find the entrance, and volunteered for each one, determining where they played and against whom. They had to hunt down an escapee from the Vaults and make him talk, find lost documents or disable a Penumbral Engine (Sigmar's obfuscation machines that kept the Vaults hidden for centuries).

For the Magebane Dungeons, I used the modular Terraclips kits I own, to set up a whole 4'x4' table worth of dungeons, including small little rooms, staircases columns and arches.

To make the Lake of Shackled Spirits, I just used a water mat and placed several sets of tall ruins and scattered large alien vegetation, to represent the drained lake bed. In the center, I placed a Penumbral Engine, ready to be disabled so the players could reveal mysteries in other tables and the path to the next table (to the victorious player of this table).

Placing Endless Spells loose on the table, as neutral hazards, was the best idea ever. Players did not have to bring them, and no game is the same with the kind of chaos these things introduce.

Throughout the missions, models would have to evade traps and could find treasure chests to open. These chests either contained a relic they could give to a Hero or unit champion, or sealed magic that could improve their Awakened Artefact by one level.

The event consistent of 3 battles, where the result of each determined where they would fight next, and what their mission would be.

After each battle, their Awakened Artefact would improve by one level, and they could apply to a single unit either an upgrade from their allegiance's Path to Glory tables or from the Regiments of Renown tables.

In one of the tables, there was even an ancient daemonic entity, imprisoned in one of the Vaults. It was hidden until the Penumbral Engine was destroyed, and then enticed the nearest warband to free them in return for their help.
The player agreed, and the creature, after eating a few warriors out of hunger, teleported away laughing...for the time being.
That is a MacFarlane toys model: they are highly detailed and relatively cheap for their quality!

After a series of battles where the entrance to the Grand Vault was unlocked, and other warbands followed through a series of hidden realmgates, warbands finally reached one of the grand chambers, holding a powerful Artefact. And chains holding something else...

A 3-way battle ensued, with the followers of Chaos allying together, and deciding to besiege the altar holding the Blade of Fulmination. But alas, they lacked the arcane key to release it: such a key had been forged by the forces of Order at the Caverns of Fulminax.

Instead, the destroyers decided to focus on the gigantic eldritch chain, convinced it must be leashing some dreadful monster hidden in the depths.

Out of nowhere, the entity that was previously imprisoned makes an appearance, fulfilling indeed its part of the bargain with the player that agreed to it, and proceeds to demolish the Stormcast Eternal force.

The monster emerges! The gargantuan creature chained in the Cloister is the terrifying Charonhydra: a godbeast-spawn from an age gone by.
Such a beast, if let loose, would surely cause untold destruction to the city above. The chaos worshipers had indeed found their mark, and proceed to disenchant and destroy the chains that bind it.
Yes my friends, that's right: those are rubber dinosaur hand puppets, bought off the internet. Amazing detail, super bargain price. Toys are always your friend when putting together large monsters or structures on a budget. Sometimes you may have to sacrifice a bit of texture detail, other times not at all!!

The only thing that can stop this monstrosity now is unlocking the Blade of Fulmination, and using it to slay the gigantic heads... The protectors have gotten hold of the key to unlock the Blade... but the servants of the Slaan know the dangers involved in wielding the cursed blade...

So they make the fateful decision to lock away the key, so nobody could ever use the blade again. The skink priest teleports away from the fray, key in hand. Sealing the fate of this battle.

With no one to stop them on time, the destroyers successfully shatter the chains, and the Charonhydra escapes its prison in the Cloister.

At the eleventh hour... the Coven Sorceress that had successfully made a pact with the trapped entity also shadow-walks across the chamber, and catches the Skink priest from behind.
Fade to black, and the fate of the Key to the Blade of Fulmination falls into the hands of plotting schemers...


Hope you enjoyed, and this inspires others to make their own local narrative events.

I will be sharing the other event I ran, The Lavafall Riots, here very soon.

 
There are plenty of little story hooks in the battletome books and campaign books: take one, find a place in the map for it, and flesh it out for your event. GW leaves them deliberately vague for a reason! :D