J4bberw0ck

I'm super interested in the Badlands. A vast unforgiving wilderness, populated by frontier towns and monsters, with the occasional Neverborn ruin, which is being encroached upon by new growth of old life out of an ancient tomb? Sign me up!

Personally, I far prefer the concept of the new sculpts, but I feel like the sculpts themselves just feel awkward. The art for the Ronin on the box looks amazing, but the sculpt just feels like she's halfway between two poses. The only one I really like is the one tipping her hat. I wasn't a big fan of the M2E sculpts either, just because them being dressed as whores felt unnecessary. Maybe it's time I make my own sculpts instead of kvetching about someone else's hard work...

Love it! So many ideas, so little time... I'm currently working on an adventure inspired by the video game Until Dawn, in which (Spoiler Alert!) the Fated are hunted through an abandoned mine by several lean, hungry monsters. I don't know how to do the fancy "hide spoiler text" thing, sorry. My movie idea, though, is Train to Ridley: a Resurrectionist turns the passengers on a crowded train from Malifaux to Ridley into zombies! The Fated must make their way from the back of the train to the front, rescuing (or ignoring) survivors, to stop the train before it derails at the end of the line. If I can work in a small child singing "Aloha Oe" I'll be just thrilled.

Great thoughts! I've been discovering similar things during my own campaign, but I love the idea of giving bosses a deck and control hand. I've definitely had boss fights that were over way too fast, and adding in my own deck/control hand would add a really interesting element to them. Especially for an "ancient evil" type boss, like a Fey.

Ooooh, good point about the ES, that's going to be fun to figure out! I'll probably wait to see what direction they go with the faction before brainstorming too hard, but it's gonna be kicking around in my head, no question. Since everyone starts the campaign with a Henchman, waiting a couple of weeks to get your first Master could be a problem in shorter, 4-week campaigns. Still, it just means you probably won't have multiple masters by the end of it, or if you do then you won't have any benefits from other Bounty rewards. Does anyone have ideas for other Neverborn Bounty options? That's the one I'm most unsure about. The original Bounty referred to unrevealed schemes, but those aren't a thing anymore. Still, I love the sneaky flavour it gave the faction's objectives. I didn't think any of the current schemes gave that same sense of sneakiness, so I ended up changing it entirely, but I bet someone has another idea.

First of all, if someone else has already done something similar, my apologies. I was watching a lot of Guerilla Miniatures Games Mordheim videos on YouTube recently, and it really ignited my passion for campaign-style games, with models that gain new equipment and skills over time. I love Malifaux too much to try to start a Mordheim meta near me, so I decided to take a crack at updating the campaign rules from Shifting Loyalties! The major problem is the role of Avatars in the campaign rules. I've been brainstorming other options to replace them, and have come up with the following: Riders? Not available for all factions Maybe allow players to choose a rider from any faction? Emissaries? Perhaps not powerful enough? Different type of power than Avatars, but you have to pay for them when making a list, which can be a problem Crossroads? Varying degrees of usefulness, not as powerful or universally used Masters? Make this the only way to hire a master? Keeps the campaign smaller, at least at first Replace reward flip references to avatars with “this crew may hire a single master at this time instead of flipping on the chart. No scrip is spent for the master. This option is only available from the start of the third week onwards. The master’s totem (or counterpart, in the case of the Viks) will be available to hire at the start of the next week. I'm leaning towards Masters being the best choice to replace Avatars. I like the idea that you have to "earn" your Master's attention with a bounty, or just flip the red joker during the events flip and give one to everybody. The other issue is that some of the Bounties refer to schemes or mechanics which no longer exist, or are now unfeasible. Here are my attempts to update those: Covert Operation Replace schemes with “Plant Explosives”, “Dig Their Graves”, and “Deliver A Message” On the Payroll Replace schemes with “Breakthrough”, “Power Ritual”, and “Take Prisoner” Mark Our Territory Replace “A Line in the Sand” with “Claim Jump” Neverborn - Unseen Objectives Replace with Unwilling Sacrifice: score at least 4 VP from Take Prisoner. Bayou - Burn Down the Barn Replace text with “Have a friendly model kill another friendly model, 5 times.” Ten Thunders - Ancestral Artifacts Add text: summon upgrades do not count towards this objective. If anyone has had experience with the campaign rules, or just thinks they've got a better idea for updating anything, let me know! I'm trying to avoid writing a completely new ruleset, and since Wyrd have firmly moved away from the Avatars, let's avoid re-creating them. Other than that, I'm open to all ideas, crazy or otherwise.

I love the old metal ronin models, but they've been out of print for so long that I can't find them anywhere. If anyone has the set of 3, I'll happily pay or trade for newer Outcasts models. I have almost the entire faction, plus a few LE models.

My favorite FM character comes from my current campaign. One of my players is wonderfully trusting, and the other is...not. So I decided to throw a Doppelganger at them and see if I could fool my wife (the suspicious one). It worked better than I could have imagined, with both characters becoming extremely protective of her. The naive one even developed a minor crush on her. They got a little suspicious when she showed up at the ritual site they were trying to disrupt, but I played it off well enough. The payoff came when my doppelganger, posing as the sweet, somewhat traumatized shopkeeper's daughter, clung onto the naive player in fear, then drew a knife and plunged it into her ribs. Nothing like starting a combat off with a critical wound to keep things interesting! Both my players were screaming, and my wife actually threw a pillow at me. They ended up cornering the doppelganger by the end of the session, and she killed herself before they could interrogate her. I haven't introduced another since then, but every new character my players come across is met with extreme suspicion. Muahahahahaha. 😈

As someone who is jumping into Neverborn for 3e with Dreamer, this is super helpful. Thank you!

Very interesting, let us know how it goes!

Along the lines of the ritual sacrifice, I could see a fire golem (or any kind, really) resulting from a death in the chosen element. For example, say there's an NPC that the Fated really connect with. Now let's say he/she dies in a fiery inferno. The Fated are upset that their friend is gone, when suddenly a fire golem stomps out of the flames and begins a rampaging quest for revenge against those who killed him/her in life. Think of it like a cross between a Draugr and a Drowned. The Fated are just trying to keep up and point the golem away from innocent bystanders. Maybe Social/Wp checks of some sort to command it, rather than just a (1) action? If they fail, it goes charging into something, heedless of the consequences.

I tend to skip the map unless there's a big/complex fight. For minor incidental fights, I just let my players say what they want to do and keep track in my mind. None of my players are wargamers, but they all find it way too hard to keep track of a big fight if they're just trying to imagine it. I draw my maps out on graph paper, and I'm generally pretty fast and loose with ranges and such, but laying out where everything is helps everyone, I find.

My best roleplaying experience was playing Call of Cthulhu with some friends. We lived in the San Francisco Bay Area at the time, so naturally I ran an adventure which took place in the city. The introductory session saw the investigators on the last ferry from Oakland to San Francisco for the night. The investigators were: a rich heiress, charming but not overly bright; a paranormal investigator named Fox who was willing to believe anything; and a sailor looking for a new life on shore. They ran across a derelict junk and decided to investigate. The crew were below-decks, nothing but desiccated husks sitting around an opened pouch of opium, pipes still in their hands. The investigators were debating what to do when the junk was boarded by cultist smugglers. While the sailor and the heiress tried to talk their way out of the problem, I got a text message from Fox's player which simply read "I stay below-decks and try the opium". Immediately, thick black tendrils erupted from his palms and snaked up to the deck, plunging into the cultists and ripping their hearts out. Fox failed his sanity check and could do nothing but stand there in horror. The sailor also failed his check, and began screaming and climbing the rigging. His player demonstrated this by throwing himself over the couch and clinging desperately to a floor lamp while hollering out what his actions. The heiress, through it all, passed every sanity check, noticed every clue, and correctly interpreted every cryptic message. Her player (my wife) did a great job of playing her in character, but her dice were on FIRE. We decided she was an idiot savant, staying cool and calm by virtue of not knowing any better. "Yes, there are nasty black tentacles ripping hearts out, but doesn't that just happen sometimes? I'm pretty sure I've heard about that." We laughed about that first adventure all through the campaign, and it completely flipped the planned character roles on their heads. The sailor never fully recovered his nerve, Fox became an unrepentant drug addict, and the heiress took charge of fighting off an ancient evil because it ripped her new dress.

Perfect, thanks folks! I honestly might pick it up just for the centerfold and the maps, those would be great to have in print!

Those of you who have the physical M3E rulebook, is it just rules, or is there some lore as well? I know it's available as a free PDF, but oftentimes such things strip out the lore. If there is lore, is it just the standard description of the game world, similar to the beginning of the M2E or TtB core books, or is there new material? I generally prefer PDFs for this sort of thing, but I'm a fiend for fiction!

I would just love to see something to do with the turn-of-the-century obsession with Egyptology. I was re-watching The Mummy (the one with Brendan Fraser), and couldn't stop thinking "these guys would make an amazing Malifaux crew". Still not sure if Imhotep and the undead would be better than O'Connell and the treasure hunters, though the latter might be stepping on the toes of a certain other treasure hunter we know about. Maybe just a researcher/librarian who can summon swarms of flesh-devouring scarabs?

That's an excellent point! This could even be the hook for an adventure. The Fated get caught with illegal soulstones, and have to do a job for a corrupt Guild official to avoid prosecution. It could even be the start of a Shadowrun-esque campaign, with the Guild official acting as the Fated's handler, or Fixer, as they take on ever-more-dangerous jobs to stay ahead of the hangman's noose. Ok, now I've got too many fun ideas. I need a new group of Fated to run this campaign with me!

I would say 2 is fair. As for the first question, I guess I would say to frame it as something you're doing to keep the pursuits useful for the first few games. Most other pursuits get an allotment of scrip for purchasing items, or even a free toolkit (which can be worth a lot), so I don't see it as unreasonable. Of course, you can also just let the other players know that if they branch out into a spell caster pursuit, they might acquire some souls tones of their own. As for the legality, that's part of why I don't consider it too much of an advantage. Fated still have to be careful about flashing them around or casting spells around Guild agents, but that's true even without the soulstones. If you cast a spell using The Whisper and the Guild sees you, you're going to be in for a bad time.

My solution for my current campaign was to start my players out as convicts in a soulstone mine. When the adventure started, I let them take advantage of the confusion to pocket a couple of low-lade soulstones. They made spells cast-able until suits were able to be built in, at which point they became an easy way to mitigate damage or boost a particularly important spell. I was worried that they'd just sell them immediately and become crazy rich, but this was mitigated by 2 factors: 1. These were uncut, low-lade soulstones. They would have had to find a disreputable dealer upon which to offload them, which would have been an adventure in and of itself. 2. My players were so dependent on their spells (2 of them were primarily spellcasters), that they wouldn't give them up for the world. Soulstones are much more valuable to a spellcaster than the scrip they'd get for selling them. It ended up working really well, and gave a Malifaux feel to casting spells. Plus it made for a couple of tense situations where the casters resorted to stabbing and/or bashing in heads with a rock to recharge their soulstones. In general, I think this is a good way to go. Give anyone who starts a spellcasting pursuit a soulstone or two. They're a cool resource, both from an RP perspective and a mechanical one. What if a soulstone has the soul of the Fated's friend/spouse/child in it? They would never want to use or sell it, except in the most dire of circumstances. Under 1st edition the Fated could just take a General Talent to add a suit to a particular skill, and this was always taken from the outset. With 2nd edition, this wasn't available until later, which I feel was done to push soulstones as a more valuable resource.

Yes! Like this: Look at that and tell me that cat's not a mimic.

Yup, that was my thought as well. The model looked awkward by itself, but placed next to the rest of the crew, the awkwardness makes sense. They're all awkward because they're not really human. Imagine if you had a human in a super realistic dog costume, on all fours, pretending to be a dog. It's still not going to look quite right, because the proportions are wrong. Given the on-purpose-awkwardness, I don't see how the knives could be positioned better. If they were going for fluid motion with this crew, then there are a million other ways they could have gone, but that's not the point. I mean, just look at the name. He's clearly a play on Agent 47 from the Hitman series, and that guy is not flexible. He can climb and hang and shimmy along ledges to a degree which shouldn't be possible for the human body, and he can change his appearance at will (holy cow he's just straight-up a mimic), but he's no Ezio Auditore. Once I changed my expectations for the character from spinning, leaping acrobat to inhuman killer, the sculpt became excellent in my eyes.

Ok, I owe this sculpt (and more importantly, the sculptor) an apology. Having seen the rest of Lucius’ box, I can see that the awkward, somewhat gangly pose is perfectly in keeping with the rest of the box. Lucius is the only one who looks comfortable being human, and all the others look like they’re just barely passing. In context, this model is perfect, and I’m seeing it in a whole new light. I think showing Agent 46 on his own might have been a mistake, but now I actually can’t wait to get that box and paint him up.

I used a frosted glass spray on my translucent Nightmare crew, and they came out really nice. It makes them paintable with any normal paints (or contrasts), and diffuses the light passing through the models so it's easier to read details.

Personally, I love the Engineer. With all the magic, monsters, and mayhem, I love that there are people who stick to the principle of "magic is just an excuse for poor workmanship". In my mind, an Engineer is that shop teacher from high school who's missing a finger, is somehow always dirty, and grumbles at everyone about "respecting the damn machines" (you know who I mean). As if that weren't enough, they get to become mad scientists! Once they get tired of hitting things with a wrench or shooting bullets like some kind of luddite, they can apply their vast knowledge to something more esoteric. It's so much fun to put together a manifested power, then sit down and go "ok, how the hell would this work as a mechanical device?". I've seen Fated on hoverboards, wielding ice guns, while a bizarre apparatus of spinning brass orbs sucks raw material from the earth, assembles it into a vaguely humanoid shape, then jolts it with soulstone-powered electricity to give it temporary sentience. Last but not least, giant stompy robot pal. The Engineer: It's All You Need!

Ooooh, mine was "when nightmares rise from the traveler's smile". It led to a Doppelganger summoning Alps and Stitched Together to lay siege to a town, all while disguised as the helpless daughter of the (now deceased) general store owner. My players immediately became protective of her, even ignoring the fact that she was new in town ("the traveler"), and the only resident who seemed happy to see them. She charmed Blanche Lifespring, the ironically-named necromancer who just kinda wants to be loved, with no trouble at all. Flora Fauna Fanny-Sutton, the oversized gremlin lass and self-professed "brains of this here operation" was won over by the presence of a very large, very red hat in the Doppelganger's shop. A few well-placed screams during the attack that night cemented their belief that she was in dire need of protection. In fact, they didn't suspect a thing until she introduced Blanche's liver to the end of her knife and her player to the critical damage tables! Blanche is now much more careful about who she flirts with, and her player grumbles at me occasionally whenever they meet someone new. "Last time I trusted someone I got stabbed in the ribs..."