Vornheiming Middenheim Part VIII: The Great Park

[UPDATE 1/6/21: I no longer support spending money on products that benefit Zak S, or giving him positive attention and connection. The short version is that I find credible claims that he has engaged in unacceptable behavior and not made up for it. For more detail, see here for the core of the accusations. To get Zak's side of things, he maintains this separate blog from his main one to post updates on the legal status of these complaints. 

Please consider these claims and make your own decision on their validity, and the implications thereof, before either supporting or shunning Zak.]

Another quick post worked in between getting ready for a New Years Eve party at the new house.  Here's a write up on the Great Park district.  The locations are a little more filled out here, and I had to come up with a little more on the rumors than what was in the book.  The write up's after the break, and I hope everyone has or had a fun and safe New Years Eve.

Vornheiming Middenheim Part VII: The Palast District

[UPDATE 1/6/21: I no longer support spending money on products that benefit Zak S, or giving him positive attention and connection. The short version is that I find credible claims that he has engaged in unacceptable behavior and not made up for it. For more detail, see here for the core of the accusations. To get Zak's side of things, he maintains this separate blog from his main one to post updates on the legal status of these complaints. 

Please consider these claims and make your own decision on their validity, and the implications thereof, before either supporting or shunning Zak.]

As much fun as the various generators were, I figured I better get a handle on how to do the different city districts.  So far I'm leaning towards keeping things brief, as I think that a Corpathium-level amount of detail per district might be too much.  I'm also using the rumors as the place to put the adventure hooks from Warhammer City: Middenheim and The Power Behind the Throne plus a few embellishments from me.  As with the previously presented rumors, I'm not going to present any as "true" and others as "false", and I will instead leave that to individual referees to decide for their game.  That makes rumors a nicely concise way to convey a lot of potential information without dictating any setting details.  Plus, the rumors can be just as valuable whether true or false, so that's pretty cool.

Also, using the contact rules from earlier, plus district specific rumors, gives a nice way to work your way towards intrigues.  I'm thinking that each district will have rumors mostly having to do with that district, and sometimes contradictory ones about other districts, so that you'll have to work your way around the city and making new contacts to get to the bottom of stuff.

At any rate, for today below the break is the write-up for the Palast district.  Please let me know if anything seems unnecessary, or if it's too sparse, or what should be added.

Sunday Special: Weird Taboo Generator

[edit: it's Sunday, not Saturday]

Reading Arnold K's totally sweet post about Wizards and Witches inspired me to try to come up with a way to think up bizarre taboos for wizards and monastic types on the fly.  I imagine some of them will take more interpreting than others, but let's try it out!

Here's the table:

d2	Mood	d4	Degree	d6	Time	d8	Verb	d10	Noun
1	Must	1	In moderation	1	Always	1	Eat	1	Meat
2	Should	2	In excess	2	Never	2	Drink	2	Slaves
		3	At all	3	In the presence of others	3	Use	3	Alcohol
		4	In vain	4	Between sunrise and sunset	4	Own	4	Sex
				5	Between sunset and sunrise	5	Abstain from	5	Words
				6	Every day	6	Tolerate	6	Violence
						7	See	7	Blood
						8	Speak with	8	Vegetables
								9	Pets
								10	Opposite Sex

And let's try a few examples:

• (Roll: 1, 4, 2, 6, 4) Must never tolerate sex in vain (I see this as a belief that sex is a necessary evil for making babies and followers of this belief would be intolerable prudes)
• (Roll: 1, 4, 3, 8, 7) Must speak with blood in the presence of others in vain (Okay, this one's weird. Maybe when in the presence of others, these people must address people based on their social class, or something weird and magical with blood?)
• (Roll: 2, 2, 6, 7, 1) Should see meat in excess every day (These guys would have to surround themselves with raw meat, more than they can eat)

It's not perfect, but I think it might be fun if you're stuck for ideas.

Vornheiming Middenheim Part VI: Cults and Intrigue

[UPDATE 1/6/21: I no longer support spending money on products that benefit Zak S, or giving him positive attention and connection. The short version is that I find credible claims that he has engaged in unacceptable behavior and not made up for it. For more detail, see here for the core of the accusations. To get Zak's side of things, he maintains this separate blog from his main one to post updates on the legal status of these complaints. 

Please consider these claims and make your own decision on their validity, and the implications thereof, before either supporting or shunning Zak.]

Today we get to the stuff I'm most excited about: the Chaos Cult and Intrigue generators! These are the parts that are most original and least a reworking of other people's stuff.  Obviously I think the reworking has value too, or I wouldn't be doing it, but coming up with these got me fired up in a way working on district write-ups or adapting the Powers that Be did not.  

So, a few words on each of the generators.  First of all, I can't help the feeling that they're overly simplistic, but I think in practice the complexity will come from interactions.  That being said, even more so than the other things, these are a draft, and I'd appreciate any suggestions for changes or additions.

The intrigue generator essentially works as a mad libs.  If you don't already have a person or group in mind, you can randomly generate the players involved, or you can just roll the other columns and plug in the groups you want to find a relationship for.  The wants and beliefs are left fairly vague so they can fit a variety of different people and situations.  If an intrigue seems weak, either a) pick one you like better, b) roll again until something gets your motor going, or c) layer on other sources of complexity like generating specific NPCs, tying in the Powers that Be, pulling in a Chaos cult, or what have you.

The Chaos cult generator's format is inspired by Logan Knight's excellent NPC Birthing Sacs.  I've added the feature that you can roll 1d4 and get a "standard" cult by reading straight across, and each cult is assumed to have an enmity/rivalry with the next one down.  Which Chaos God is generated does a lot of the heavy lifting for the flavor of the cult, as the rest of the columns were made to generically fit any one of the Chaos gods.  I figure I'll never be as evocative as the Realms of Chaos books, so I won't try.  I feel like the "quirks" could be more interesting, but it was hard to come up with ideas that worked equally well for followers of every ruinous power.  After the break is the actual rules.

Vornheiming Middenheim Part V: The Powers that Be

[UPDATE 1/6/21: I no longer support spending money on products that benefit Zak S, or giving him positive attention and connection. The short version is that I find credible claims that he has engaged in unacceptable behavior and not made up for it. For more detail, see here for the core of the accusations. To get Zak's side of things, he maintains this separate blog from his main one to post updates on the legal status of these complaints. 

Please consider these claims and make your own decision on their validity, and the implications thereof, before either supporting or shunning Zak.]

So, it ended up taking me a little longer than I expected to get the "Powers that Be" table set up.  Turns out that it's pretty tough to satisfyingly emulate the innovation to have each entry show a relationship with the next entry from  Zak S.'s Vornheim Aristocrats table.  As it is, I ended up with only 25 entries.  This should probably be chopped down to 20 or increased to 30, so that it corresponds to an actual die.

For those unfamiliar with Zak's table, the idea is that you can randomly pick an aristocrat/powerful person by rolling once, and he or she will have all of the traits from left to right, with the relationship indicated by the last entry with the next person on the table.  I've built this so that it can act as a quick reference or relationship map if you want to play Middenheim "by the book", or you can randomize new aristocrats by rolling once for each column and getting totally new NPCs.

So, for example, say you roll a 15 and you're doing it the simple way.  You get Janna Eberhauer, Deputy High Wizard, an intelligent and friendly wizard with freckles.  She terrifies Josef Sparsam the Chancellor.  Or, if you want to go the complicated route, you could roll a 6, 10, 11, 15, 16, 7, 25, which gives you the following: Petra (no last name), the Midden Marshal, who has freckles and is an enthusiastic collector of antique art.  She is a lover of Baron Stefan Todbringer.

If you want to get really complex, repeat a few times rather than having the "relationship to" column point to a fully developed "book" NPC.

I'd say that if I were writing an adventure, rather than creating a toolkit, I'd take about this level of information and put it into a visual relationship map, and I'd add in a few more of the plots given in Warhammer City and in "Power Behind the Throne" to suggest ways for PCs to get involved.  As it is, I'm hoping that the intrigue generator will do most of the heavy lifting, and I'm going to parse the stuff in the supplement and adventure for material to put in that.

Powers that Be

Roll	Last Name	First Name	Position	Physical Feature	Character Trait	Relationship to
1	Helseher	Albrecht	High Wizard	Gaunt and ascetic	More concerned with abstractions than real life	Suspects the worst of
2	Hoflich	Joachim	Law Lord	Quiet and Dignified	Wry sense of humor	Holding ransom a relative of
3	Ehrlich	Reiner	Law Lord	Quiet and Unassuming	Melancholic	Desperately trying to secretly communicate with
4	Schutzman	Ulrich	Commander of the Watch	Tall and imposing	Harsh and Unbending	Seeks guidance from
5	Stolz	Werner	Chief Priest of Sigmar		Cautiously ambitious	Wants to humiliate
6		Ar-Ulric	High Priest of Ulrich	Tall and Rangy	Kindly but Ambitious	Having an affair with
7	Schlagen	Emmanuelle	Lady at Court	Tall and willowy	Crafty and Manipulative	Lover of
8	Todbringer	Boris	Graf	Powerful build going to seed	Crippled by grief	Can't stand the sight of
9	Prunkvoll	Siegfried	Knight Eternal	Wears armor on all public occasions	Pompous, apalling bore	Turned down a proposition from
10	Liebkosen	Petra	Lady at Court	Dark, curly hair	Gold digger	Having a fling with the son of
11	Von Genscher	Maximillian	Midden Marshall	Facial Scar	Courageous and magnanimous	Suspicious of the rise to power of
12	Goebbels	Gotthard	Komission Convenor and Chairman of the Merchants' Guild	Premature grey hair	Vain and grasping	Secretly working for
13	Wasmeier	Karl-Heinz	Law Lord	Unremarkable	Cruel and avaricious	Dangerously underestimates
14	Schwermutt	Johann	Garrison Commander	Light build	Human and approachable	Smitten by
15	Eberhauer	Janna	Deputy High Wizard	Freckles	Intelligent and Friendly	Terrifies
16	Sparsam	Josef	Chancellor	Walks with a limp	Enthusiastic collector of antique art	Irrationally despises
17	Zimberlich	Hildegarde	Chaperone to the Graf's Daughter	Frail but Sprightly	Good character, not easily fooled	Fiercely devoted to
18	Todbringer	Katarina	"Princess"	Beautiful	Delicate and refined	Infatuated with
19	Lafarel	Rallane	Court Minstrel	Silvery blonde hair	Hopeless romantic	Best friend of
20	Fanmaris	Allavandrel	Master of the Hunt	Startling Green Eyes	Enjoys the good things in life	Drinking buddies with
21	Schmiedehammer	Dieter	Graf's Champion	Broken nose	Bright, friendly, and helpful	Engaged to
22	Jung	Kirsten	Lady at Court	Simple, classically stylish	Keen Intuition	Strongly dislikes
23	Sinnlich	Natasha	Lady at Court	Ice blue eyes	Worships power	Regrets a fling with
24	Pavarotti	Luigi	Baronial Physician	Fat and flamboyant	Good hearted with a lust for life	Provides care for
25	Todbringer	Stefan	Baron	Sickly and drooling	Feeble minded, idiotic	Can only get help from