(Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more; or close the walls up with our English dead...)
My usual gaming group, like most others I assume, enjoy a change of pace every now and then; the opportunity to take a break from the current campaign to play something different. Usually this takes the form of a one-shot adventure, whether for the current system or for another, this being something that my group and I do...sporadically. We've also decided recently that we should try to play one-shots on a more regular (preferably monthly) basis, both in order to try out other games and to give the current GM (in this case yours truly) the opportunity to get out from behind the screen and roll dice / flip cards with the rest of the party.
Over the past twelve months we've played one shots of Shadowrun, Only War, D&D 5E, and the subject of todays post, Malifaux : Through the Breach. We've plans for plenty more in the future too, with one of my players hopefully running a Dresden Files game for us next week, and me being ready to run Mutant Chronicles 2E once my kickstarter rulebook arrives and I've had the chance to do some fiddling. As we carry on with these side games I've decided that I'm going to take the opportunity both to regale you fine ladies and gentlemen with tales of my groups exploits, and to review and / or recommend the systems we play.
So, without further ado, lets kick this series off with Malifaux : Through the Breach, more specifically the sample adventure Recruitment Drive which I picked up on Free RPG Day earlier this year...
The Setting :
For those unaware I'll provide a brief overview of the setting. Through the Breach (and indeed the Malifaux setting as a whole) is set in an alternate universe where magic and the supernatural exist. Over the years however the power of magic has faded and its practitioners have grown weak. In desperation a cabal of arcane practitioners performed a ritual that tore open a rift, a Breach, to elsewhere, that elsewhere being the magic rich dimension of Malifaux.
The most important location in Malifaux is the city of the same name, built unknown ages ago by whatever race originally ruled that dimension. The city has been colonised by humanity and is ruled by The Guild, an authoritarian organisation that regulate the use of magic and the trade of the Soulstones so prized by magic users. However they are not the only power in Malifaux, the others being...
- The Arcanists : A loose organisation of magic users who chafe under the guilds restrictions. They are barely united and split into numerous sub factions such as the Miners and Steamfitters Union and the Cult of December, all with their own aims and ambitions.
- The Resurrectionists : Necromancers and unregulated sorcerers fascinated by the powers of life and death. Their ranks include such infamous figures as the serial killer Seamus and the insane coroner Dr McMourning.
- The Ten Thunders : A shadowy faction with its origins in the far east who combine elements of the Triads and Yakuza with chinese and japanese mysticism. Having infiltrated every other faction (in the tabletop game many of their Master figures are dual faction) they have fingers in every pie and interests everywhere in Malifaux.
- The Neverborn : The dimension of Malifaux's original inhabitants, these Nephelim, Nightmares and innumerable other horrors resent humanities intrusion into their realm. An incredibly varied faction composed of everything from dreaming children and murderous teddies to cackling hags and winged demons.
- The Outcasts : A grab bag of characters and groups who retain their independence from the other factions, they are mostly mercenaries who will throw in with the highest bidder. Von Schills famed Freikorpsmen, the scavenger Leviticus and the deadly Victoria's are all counted amongst their number.
- The Gremlins : Malifaux's other native inhabitants, these cackling little horrors many not seem particularly menacing at first glance, but they possess a vicious cunning and the squealing of their pigs is often the last sound heard by those who dare trespass in their Bayou home.
In case you couldn't tell, I'm a fan.
The Mechanics :
The mechanics for Through the Breach are pretty straightforward, the core rules being based around the idea of Duels, with the players having to meet or exceed a set Target Number in order to succeed in a challenge, pretty straightforward right? That said it has a few major quirks that make it stand out, the most notable being the Fate Deck and the concepts of Cheating Fate and Triggers. Through the Breach replaces dice with cards, instead of rolling you instead take the top card from a face down, thoroughly shuffled deck. You can use a normal deck of cards if you want but there are plenty of official and unofficial fate decks available, some of which are frankly beautiful pieces of work. The Fate Deck consists of four suites, Crows, Masks, Rams and Tomes numbered from 1 to 13, as well as the Red and Black Jokers. For most randomised tests you flip a card, add the appropriate statistic, and compare that to a set target number. Nice and simple, right?
What makes this particular mechanic unique is the ability of players to Cheat Fate. Each player has a small hand of cards which, under the right circumstances, they may use to Cheat Fate, replacing the card they've flipped with one from their hand. This adds an extra level of tactical thinking to the game by giving the players the option to stack the deck (pun intended) in their favour by improving their flips and guaranteeing the activation of Triggers. What's a trigger? Well, many of the attacks and actions available to the player characters incorporate one or more Triggers, these are additional effects that activate so long as a card of the correct suite is used for that action (though I should make it clear that certain actions, especially those that involve spell casting, require a particular suite to be used as their activation card anyway). For example a common trigger is Critical Strike, which increases the damage of an attack by 1 for every Ram used for the ranged attack. Other triggers may inflict status ailments, increase healing, allow characters to move themselves or others, and so on and so forth.
The last interesting little quirk I want to make note of is that all flipping is done by the players. The Fatemaster (GM), never flips a single card. All flips made by NPC's against the party instead set a predetermined Target Number for their attempts to dodge, withstand, or otherwise react. Likewise the amount of damage dealt by NPC's (Malifaux and Through the Breach using scaling damage depending on the variance between an attacks Duel Total and Target Number) is derived from the players Dodge flips, it's an interesting little wrinkle that takes a bit of work off the FM's shoulders.
There's a few more interesting twists to the games rules system, but the Fate Deck and its uses are the most important and interesting of them. Overall it's a nice, solid system that takes a little while to get used to (especially to ardent dice throwers like myself), but once you do so it's very easy to use and gives the players a level of control that they lack under a dice based system. The overview in the booklet is more than sufficient for running the one shot, and I assume that the full system has plenty of overlap with the skirmish game, making it easier for players of one to pick up the nuances of the other.
The Characters :
Once we'd decided to play through this one shot we sat down with out copies of the adventure and took a look through the character section. Four pre-written characters are provided, each with their own stats, history, and reason to be waiting on the platform at Southgate Station (where the adventure begins). They are as follows...
- Olivia "Livvy" Madison, a shotgun wielding amateur bounty hunter. She's waiting at Southgate Station for one of her targets to arrive in the hope that his bounty will be the first step on improving her lot in life.
- Noel Charron, a New Orleans born magic user on the run from the guild. He's waiting at the station to meet a representative of the Arcanists to whom he must prove his worth.
- Kata Jensen, a young fist fighter with a pneumatic arm and a chip on her shoulder. She's come to Southgate to meet collect a package from a man named Yang, whether he wants to part with it or not.
- Doctor Fareed Nejem, an Egyptian physician employed (not entirely willingly) by the Guild to tend to their guards. He's waiting for rather special delivery, a pneumatic arm for his daughter who's limb he was forced to amputate due to a potentially deadly infection.
The Adventure :
With me in control of the good doctor the adventure began with all four characters waiting on the dismal, rain washed stones of Southgate Station for the 10:15 to Edge Point. Naturally the evening didn't go as planned, the spotlight on the approaching train illuminating a pack of twisted figures (partially formed of metal, partially of necrotic flesh) sabotaging the rails. As you'd expect this caused the rapidly approaching train to derail, crashing through the station and coming to a halt on its side. The undead saboteurs (who had climbed off the rails and onto the platforms) wasted no time in attacking the derailed train, breaking open the carriages to seize living and mechanical cargo alike. Unable to risk the valuables and contacts they'd been waiting for the party intervened, opening fire on the pair of Iron Zombies that had clambered up onto the same platform as them.
Whilst Noel's magic proved pretty ineffective Kata's pneumatic fist and Livvy's shotgun proved more than capable of taking down the twisted creatures assisted by a handful of tentative shots from Doctor Nejem. As soon as the creatures fell the party approached the train to search it... only to be interrupted by the sound of gunfire from the opposite platform. Running to investigate the party found a small, portly man struggling to reload a revolver as one of the Iron Zombies lumbered towards him. After putting the beast down the small man introduced himself as Travis Daley, an accountant working for the Guild. Terrified and excited in equal measure he told them how he'd been at the station to sign off on the delivery of some mining equipment, only to find himself hiding when the creatures attacked. He did however see them make their way into a nearby sewer entrance along with their (sometimes struggling) cargo.
Gameplay Notes, Combat : Combat seems to flow pretty well, with each characters attacks and abilities being clearly denoted on their sheets in the same manner as the tabletop game. This first skirmish probably took about half an hour to fight through with each of us being able to meaningfully contribute. The one exception to that was Noel, due to his spells requiring Tomes to activate (and him quickly burning through those in his hand) he didn't manage to do much other than briefly distract one of the Zombies. Kata's player on the other hand immediately fell in love with the Rabbit Punch trigger after punching a zombies head off with a single round of attacks... The one recommendation I would make is that you should probably use models and a tape measure for movement and attack ranges as opposed to the grid we were using.
In addition to Travis the party (more specifically Doctor Nejem, who had gone to check on the wounded) also came across a wounded guild guard named Brennus MacCrae, who Fareed saved with some swift needle work and the application of a few ointments and unguents from his doctors bag. As he worked the rest of the party carried on speaking to the accountant, who, though unauthorised to pay them for their assistance, implied that the mining equipment taken by the Iron Zombies was of considerable value, and that the Guild might be willing to offer a reward for their return.
Some thinking of the reward, others of the items and contacts denied to them by the Iron Zombies attack, the party agreed to head into the sewers, taking a few minutes to introduce themselves to each other and to allow Doctor Nejem to treat the injuries of those of them who'd been wounded. Taking a lantern from the station they descended into the darkness, Kata taking the lead. After a few minutes of searching through the channels and walkways of the cities sewer system the party eventually managed to track them to their lair, following the scuffed mosses, torn bits of rotten flesh, and scraps of ripped cloth that they'd left in their wake.
The party emerged from the sewer channels into an empty cistern, the interior of which had been converted into some sort of cross between a mechanists workshop and a jury rigged operating room. Strapped down to the guerneys were a number of passengers taken from the train, including Olivia's target, Noel's contact and Kata's Mr Yang, all fortunately still alive. The Iron Zombies who had taken them were, bizarrely, stood in a semi circle on the far side of the room around a radio-like Aethervox, listening intently to the insane ramblings of a long winded academic who's words they seemed to find utterly fascinating. The party took advantage of their distraction to attempt to sneak into position to ambush them, with Kata, Noel and Livvy moving through the maze of guerneys and spare parts whilst Dr Nejem stayed at the top of the stairs leading into the room, carefully drawing a bead on the closest Iron Zombie with his pistol.
Noel proved as equally capable at stealth as he had with magic, knocking a pile of tools from a rudimentary workbench and drawing the attention of the zombies. A vicious battle ensued, with Livvy making good use of both cover and the power of her shotgun to keep the Iron Zombies at arms length whilst Kata pummelled one of them to death with her pneumatic fist. Noel had the misfortune to be caught alone by one of the abominations and was partially eviscerated by them, being saved only by the intervention of Dr Nejem who had previously been taking potshots at the creatures whenever one of them presented itself. The third and final zombie fell to a mixture of buckshot and mechanically enhanced pugilism, leaving the cistern empty save for the whimpers of the captives and the unpleasantly fleshy noises of the doctor seeing to Noel's wounds.
Gameplay Notes, Skill Challenges : Our search through the sewer system for the Iron Zombies was a Skill Challenge, something that's become far more common in tabletop RPG's over the past few years, most notably perhaps in D&D 4E. Having taken a look at the rules in the book they're set out very clearly with a list of what skills are allowed to be used, the target number, how long each attempted skill test takes, and how many successes / failures can occur before the party succeed or fail on the challenge. My one minor complaint here is that I think the list of available skills is unnecessarily narrow, though with a clever players and an understanding GM you should be able to work around that little niggle. Interestingly the adventure added an additional layer of complexity to this particular challenge, aside from simply whether the party succeeded or not. With each test taking 5 minutes the amount of time taken by the party to succeed (should they do so) had a direct effect on whether or not any of the prisoners remained alive by their arrival at the cistern. In fact had the party taken over 120 minutes the cistern would have been empty, the Iron Zombies having moved on ahead of the players. That's a level of dynamism that I very much approve of.
With the Iron Zombies defeated the party claimed their prizes. Noel (once capable of walking) freed his contact from her restraints, hoping that saving her had made a good enough impression. Livvy partially freed her bounty, who proved only too eager to cooperate, preferring jail to unanaesthetised vivisection. Kata claimed the package that Mr Yang had been carrying (the man himself having been accidentally killed in the skirmish) and Dr Nejem managed to locate his daughters pneumatic arm in the piles of scrap and tools stolen by the Zombies. Freeing the rest of the prisoners the party herded them out of the cistern and back towards the surface, out of the dank sewer and into the wan, early morning light of Malifaux...
In Conclusion :
I very much enjoyed this one shot, the mechanics are solid, the story (basic as it was) was interesting, and I quite liked my character. I'd definitely be up for playing Through The Breach again in the future should any of my gaming group want to run it, one of them has purchased the core rulebook so it's within the realms of possibility. With regards to the complete game one of the most interesting aspects of it that I came across in my brief thumb through the book was that character generation is partially performed via a basic tarot spread. Now that's a thematic touch that I very much admire.
On the subject of playing this game again... I did have what I think to be a rather interesting idea during our game... a campaign where the party explore the Sea's of Malifaux... or should that be the Zee's?
Until Next Time
Happy Gaming
Michael
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