Malsqueek

I'm thrilled to finally have the books come in. Gaming from PDF as sole reference is terrible and my group loves the game. Also stoked about the fancy fate deck. If you care enough to read them, Nathan, my group has a face character who has been a bit disappointed in the lack of advanced social pursuits. As a result, he and I are working together to create three distinct social focused advanced pursuits which I would love to see represented officially at some point (even if only add having provided inspiration)

You should be able to message them via the KS board and get that updated. At least, that's what you did a year ago when I moved.

The positively gorgeous thing about this system is that the amount of effort it takes to do a thing like is essentially nil. I had a player ask if he could get possessed by a necromancer from the first opening of the breach so he could play with the magic system for a while. About an hour later, we had a system for the two minds taking control of the body, and some modifiers for certain types of skills depending upon who was "driving" at the time. It works a charm. As a fun related note: I have a friend who is fascinated by probabilities and I asked him about the comparative value of positive twists versus TN increases. In a pair of fresh decks doing an opposed flip, a single positive twist is worth approximately +2.5 TN, two positives are worth roughly +3.25, and the third only +4. Of course, since each value only occurs four times, a live deck has far wackier probabilities, but as a rough comparison, I found it VERY helpful as a Fatemaster to know that as a generality, +2/-2 is roughly offset by a single positive or negative twist (respectively).

I've gotten a lot of mileage from a Guild Guard analog with 4-5 Desperate Mercs as the guild issue 1-h combat encounter. Also: Doppelgangers are your friend. They are a great way to stymie a combat focused group without being heavy handed in terms of danger.

What I noticed is that while the Fated are pretty screaming powerful (even if not particularly geared for combat), it is somewhat troublesome getting encounters "just right" if it is just a toe-to-toe fight. It's pretty easy for them to be glass cannons. Part of the issue is if you aren't using full on tabletop, the fast and loose nature of combat makes it really easy to fudge ranges too much and get careless with the groupings. I combated that by taking a page from a particular Grimdark Fantasy RPG by a particular board game company and using their model for distance, where the players had markers that were them, as did the critters, and then if they were touching they were "engaged", if they were near, but without distance markers, they were "Close" (<=4 yds), and then put a marker down between for each full 4 yds distance between a "close" group. You could also make it more granular by working some "if touching the marker" stuff in, but we didn't really find it necessary. This allowed a small amount of tactical work without really breaking the immersion that this game does so well. The second thing I found challenging was that the critters scale pretty fast, and while combat characters have a pretty easy time with Enforcers, and sometimes Henchmen, the difference between a static 5 and a static 7 is pretty huge for some characters. The most flexible things that I've found are to plan encounters with environmental aspects which allow the lesser-skilled Fated to interact with the critters or with other aspects of the encounter instead of just "shoot-gun", and to use the "this critter require crit-death to kill" to make fundamentally weaker critters stronger without making them inaccessible for the weaker characters.

I had a similar mind, to enrich the economic portion of the game as well. For the number of pages of things you can buy, there's quite a few omissions. Once the books and such get in our grubby little hands, if you'd like to work on it together, I'm willing to help out.

Death being technically a critical effect is a bit non-intuitive, but its REALLY great when you start beating up on your fated and they get to about -4/5 wounds and start considering just passing out to stop taking punishment. As a side bonus, the way that death works in this system for the Fated really makes their ends seem very cinematic.

The MSU Advanced Pursuit has two pursuit talents which allow you to advance aspects of a construct much faster than usual. One for Aspects and one for Skills. Correct Application of that would likely bring the construct cost down a fair chunk. At one point, I thought there was a talent that doubled your construct points generated as well, but that may have been earlier in the beta.

I actually did an encounter where a modified peacekeeper was knocked broken by a pigapult and the players had to rescue their MSU contract from its flailing. They chose to use the nearby crane that I had placed to grab and trap the thing so they could escape with their contract. They chose to rush to the supplies shed and turn the crane into an erstwhile demolitions device with dynamite. They weren't supposed to beat the thing, but I gave it to them for their trouble. THAT is how you beat masters in Malifaux, not by shooting then with your gun.

Frankly, I like that the real movers and shakers of Malifaux are incredibly difficult to kill. The way characters die also makes the players very difficult to outright kill as well. As my group's Fatemaster, if they wanted to go looking for Pandora to try to kill her, I'd let it play out exactly as the system says. Without preparation, and some surprise and luck, I would allow my players to earn exactly what they asked for. Then again, my Malifaux is a very very dangerous place, and I've impressed that on my players with no uncertainty, and they are fine with masters being inaccessible from a combat standpoint.

It is a little confusing until you have put together a few spells and cast them a few times. However, a session or two in, and I think the spellcasters of the world will be pretty happy. I do think that Mastered Magia/Immuto are FAR more important for caster characters than the system lets on, considering how Grimoires work. The TTB system is a little non-standard, but it really does an elegant job of letting magic be powerful along relatively linear confines and as a caster improves, it is largely their BREADTH of ability that improves as opposed to the power of any one individual fireball spell. As an example, as your skill and aspects improve you may be able to comfortably tack 1/1/2 on to your favorite fireball spell, but it's not really going to get all that much better than it was when you first got it. What you WILL be able to do is take that fireball you are good with, and keep using it with a new book in your hand which allows you to tear off someone's face and wear it for your own (a delightfully gruesome spell) and THEN fireball your unsuspecting victims with your old school spell.

My Fated provided me with pretty rich stories about who they were pre-malifaux and why they were going in, which allowed me to tie them all together fairly well. After that, I played on one character's extreme greed to make the fated all complicit in a smuggling operation gone bad (they stole something from a smuggler who was executed in front of them by guild guard for it). That did a pretty good job of impressing the danger they were in upon them, and I was able to weave several of their backgrounds together for some mutual interest.

I think the biggest thing with this system is that you will need a gaming group that enjoys theme and characters. As an example, I have an old Russian soldier in my group who uses a specific shotgun because it was the one he "fought with in the war" and not "the best one". When you have a group of players who give as much to the narrative as they take, the somewhat permissive ruleset is a HUGE boon. IF your group really sticks hard to minutae in rule language, this system may require a lot of modification or a few more supplements to really be enjoyable. My group is very experimental and is thrilled with the system. I'd like to see some more information on Enchanted/Gearworks stuff but beyond that it is a really solid backbone to work with for a group that likes flexibility (The Firefly/Supernatural system has a lot of similar elements in that regard)

My group has been playing since October pretty consistently, and I have to say that while I share a measure of concern over the Magic system, very little of it has anything to do with the core mechanics. First and foremost, this game is ABOUT being flexible so that the mechanics fit the story. There are a large number of things that are not explicitly denied because the game wants the Fatemaster to "Get to Yes" (The section in the FM guide that I think belongs in every FM/GM/DM guide ever. Read it now, your players will love you for it). The magic system is in large part a very good representation of that. Example: Hedge Magic and Elemental Immutos - The Immuto section says "stick an Immuto on a Magia, adjust TN by the amount and adjust the effect by the amount" The only restrictions are inherent to the Magia. Immuto that do +1 damage are useless on Teleportation, because it doesn't deal damage. The Lightning Immuto is useless on the "Heal" spell because it doesn't matter if you are wearing armor. This DOES NOT prevent you from putting them on the Magia. That isn't even FM Fiat, that's just the rules not explicitly preventing things that don't exactly make sense for a player to DO on purpose. A little strange, yes, inherently bad? Not even a little. Your concern on soulstones is legitimate, and actually one I share, but for different reasons. First, I think it is ridiculous that a soulstone the size of your fist inherently be a higher quality. Most ores are the opposite, you have a higher chance of getting a better grade the more trash you are willing to skim off. As a result, I modified the soulstone system to separate size (storage) and clarity (seep). What this does is allow you to give your players tiny stones that hold 1 charge but regen it in a month, which allows them to build clever pneumatics without robbing the sovereign state of Russia. For Lade, I take the average rounded down of the size + seep ratings for the stone and viola! A lade rating. It works near identical to the existing system with only a tiny modification, and allowed me much greater flexibility to introduce soulstones to my game without twisting the power level too much. My personal issues with the magic system are that there aren't much by way of examples for enchanted goods, and that there are some Magia/Immuto that I find to be significant lacking from the book (Such as resist elements, armor, and mute spellcasting). Similarly, with enchanted goods, and with Darlists, those should technically fall under Guild "ok" policy because they are magic for everyone, but a tiny token which shoots lightning but only works for the darlist that made it is really just a focus, and is magic.

My group (2 backers and 3 others) loves this system, in general. We decreased the rate at which Fated get cheatin' cards to value them up a bit, but beyond that have been playing vanilla. As a generality, I think that this system really requires an involved group. It's super fun when the story is an honest back and forth between Fatemaster and Fated. As an example, I have one player who asked after a session "I like my character, but I really want to explore the magic system and have another character in mind. Do you think I could become possessed and play two characters at once?" The answer to that was "Yes". It actually played REALLY well into the story we are playing. I had another character that missed a session and wanted to do a make-up session solo so he could "explore the reasons his character was in Malifaux, and also bring some BS back to the group for them to enjoy". With players like these in this system, it is astonishingly flexible and powerful. If your players are more focused on hack-n-slash and tactical movements, while the system supports it, it is fast and loose enough with the tactical aspect that it will probably fall pretty flat for those players (plus, the system is dangerous). I'll be releasing some of my game notes and story arcs when we get physical books in hand, as well as a few of the neat mechanics that have worked well for our group. TLDR: Game is really good overall, but your players need to be story-driven to get the most out of the system.

I'm pretty stoked to try to actually sculpt the whole crew. Think evil street side carnival puppet show.

This is a phenomenal set of miniatures. I would love to see those across the table (from someone else.. Sonia and Austringers drive me bonkers). Beautiful work!

I just started painting again after about a year break (read: too busy). I got the first of my Stitched Together's done this morning, with Coppelius and the Poltergeist coming up in the next few weeks. Apologies for the poor photo. March 21st, 2011; Apologies for the poor photo. I will share all my upcoming projects in this thread. Upcoming Projects; Custom Sculpted Collodi crew Custom Taelor sculpt for a friend

I dunno Jim, I'm not sure if all the Ordos will play nice together. The stuff looks fantastic, and I'm super stoked to come up to the tourney.

That is beautiful, Deadpool. If I can ask, about how many layers are in that robe's highlights?

Sweet. I have some matte medium from an "interference particulate" project I was playing with a few months ago. I'll try that out on my last Sorrow and see how it works.

Skushion, You have perfectly identified my problem with #1. I think I may need to invest in a wet palette, because I find myself re-blending the same "steps" three or four times for any given color, which gives inconsistencies, and also makes it really tough to gently blend colors. For #2, does that mean that you are using the "end shade" as a glaze and applying it 7-8-9 times to the same areas, then highlighting?

So, I'm starting to really like doing blending and layers on my miniatures to give more texture to large flat areas, however, I notice that my blending tends to look pretty chunky from color to color. Are there any good equipment/technique tips that the good folks (and the bad ones) on this forum can give me?

When your wife jokes about you being like a 2 year old eating spaghetti from the mess you make every time you open up super glue... And isn't really joking.

Thats a solid first go. Clean painting, good color scheme, you picked out the details well. You should be proud of that mini!