The new Iron Kingdoms Roleplaying Game system has been out for a couple of weeks, so it’s high time we take a look at character creation options.  A striking feature of the process is that each player character has two starting careers, and can pick up more as his adventuring life runs on.  So which careers to pick?  Some appear to compliment each other nicely, but with all your skill and ability choices limited by per-career lists, you run a serious risk of making somebody that’s totally worthless in a scrap or completely helpless outside a fight.

To help mitigate this, the following technique can be applied to each career you are considering.  Plot out your careers on two axes, Urban vs. Wilderness and Combat vs. Skills.  If your GM wants to run a combat-intensive urban campaign, you would be well-served to lean towards a career combination that suits.  Such a character may be a boat-anchor in a wilderness skilled campaign.

The Procedure: Keep two running tallies, one for Urban, one for Combat.  Add five to the Urban tally for every starting ability, connection, or skill that is clearly urban, subtract five for those that are clearly not. Many don’t fit neatly, so don’t apply any number for those.  For abilities, connections, and skills available through advancement, add or subtract four for every ability or connection.  The values are ten for any skill capped at four, five for any skill capped at three, one for any skill capped at two.  Repeat for Combat but add five for each spell the career starts with (spellcasters are for killing stuff in this setting, mostly).

As and example, take the Alchemist’s Combat axis:

• +10 Combat for starting abilities
• +10 Combat for starting military skills.
• -10 Combat for starting occupational skills.
• +16 Combat for advancement abilities.
• -4 Combat for advancement connections.
• +12 Combat for advancement military skills.
• -61 Combat for advancement occupational skills.
• Total of -27 Combat. The Alchemist is mostly a skilled career.

Now for the Urban axis:

• +0 Urban for starting abilities.
• +5 Urban for starting skills.
• +4 Urban for advancement connections.
• +41 Urban for advancement skills
• Total of +50 Urban. There’s nothing inherently outdoorsy about being an Alchemist.

Contrast this with the Ranger:

• +10 Combat for starting abilities
• +10 Combat for starting military skills.
• -20 Combat for starting occupational skills.
• +36 Combat for advancement abilities
• +42 Combat for advancement military skills.
• -61 Combat for advancement occupational skills.
• -10 Urban for starting abilities.
• -10 Urban for starting skills.
• -32 Urban for advancement abilities.
• -39 Urban for advancement skills
• Total of 17 Combat. The Ranger has a lot of skills and a lot of fighting prowess
• Total of -91 Urban. This career is built for the wild places between cities.

Theoretically if you were to make a character that is an Alchemist/Ranger you add these scores together for a -10 Combat / -41 Urban character that is probably better suited for a wilderness campaign with a mix of fighting and skill play than for a combat-heavy urban campaign.

Of course, this is highly-generalized and a great deal of the point totals come from choices available to the character as he gains experience. An Alchemist/Ranger that keeps picking up skills from the Alchemist career has he advances is going to be much more urban, and depending on the abilities selected during advancement there’s a lot of room to become something of a walking calamity in combat.

The game developers over at Privateer Press have been busy. Not busy producing new IKRPG material, but busy juggling what was once a nicely streamlined skirmish game WARMACHINE. Every year since its launch, Privateer Press has released a major expansion to the product, from Prime to Escalation to Apotheosis, then Superiority, and most recently Legends. Each of the four original factions has grown into new niches and fortified early strengths. It’s quite a good game.

But after six rule books and the introduction of the HORDES product line, things have gotten unwieldy. Each of the several-dozen models available has its own special rules, often creating exceptions to a core set of rules that is quite streamlined and almost elegant. The reminds me of a beautiful woman putting on makeup and jewelry. She puts a little something on to draw attention to her eyes, maybe a pair of earings. That’s all nice, but taken a little too far she’ll look like a tramp or a clown. The interactions of special rules had crossed the line at some point. The Privateers had to put an online FAQ up to keep the errata and rules-interaction rulings straight.

So they’re hitting the reset button. In April, we’ll see previews of the rules revisions. Every model’s point cost has been adjusted, unit and warjack rules have been revised, power attacks are being overhauled, and all your stat-cards will be obsolete when the second edition hits the shelves. I eagerly anticipate not the new release (I haven’t played a game of WARMACHINE in over a year), but rather the fanbase reactions. The pro-skub and anti-skub enthusiasts will be pouring out of the woodwork on this subject.

Oh, and here’s to the Juggernaut getting an tune-up.

Little known facts about the Butcher of Khardov:

• Khadoran Kommandants call him “sir.”
• Orsus Zoktavir does not tolerate card-counting.
• The Butcher of Khardov has a weakness for Victorian romance novels.
• Orsus Zoktavir has a gun. No, really.
• The Butcher has a preset kill-counter that’s stored as a 16-bit signed integer. He must be rebooted after every 32,768 Cygnarans he slays.
• Due to his Suio-Ryu fighting style, The Butcher’s wave-slicing stroke is unbeatable when in the water.
• Orsus Zoktavir is a vegetarian.

I don’t care for the whole Khador == Soviet Russia oversimplification, but with the release of the Kayazy Underboss unit attachment and Yuri the Axe, there’s a rather solid cold-blooded-killer army available now for the Motherland:

Faction: Khador
Army Points: 750/750
Victory Points: 26

Kommander Sorscha Kratikoff
– Destroyer
Yuri the Axe
– Manhunter
– Manhunter
Doom Reavers
Kayazy Assassins (8)
– Kayazy Assassins Underboss
Kossite Woodsmen (6)
Widowmakers
Eiryss, Mage Hunter of Ios
Gorman Di Wulfe, Rogue Alchemist
Kell Bailoch
Croe’s Cutthroats (6)

Each model is directly associated with assassination, Kommander Sorscha being renown in WARMACHINE for her “woosh” tactic, leading to the quick demise of many enemy Warcasters over the years. The Destroyer has traditionally played the role of Sorscha’s assassination-partner for the Wind Rush to Icy Gaze combination along with Eiryss. Each of the other mercenaries is explicitly a professional assassin, as are the Kayazy ally unit. The Widowmakers are snipers, not assassins, but this is a rather fine semantic point from the perspective of Khador’s enemies. The only models that are a bit of a stretch thematically are the Doom Reavers (a penal unit of berserkers driven mad by their enchanted weapons). I included them due to the criminality of their background. The Kossite Woodsmen are treated as mercenary near-criminals in the background information, and add to the “hired gun” flavor of much of this list.

It’s also almost entirely Advanced Deployment, which is big fun. Line your little gaggle of murderers up against precisely the assets you mean to. A variation is also possible for 500pt games, but doesn’t quite have the punch and lacks the thematic overkill.

Today Privateer Press announced their first departure from the Iron Kingdoms setting in a major release. First they had the Iron Kingdoms RPG setting, released as d20 supplements. Then came WARMACHINE, a miniatures tactical game that is set in the Iron Kingdoms. It has been doing really quite well, spawning a stand-alone expansion game called HORDES that shares the setting, timeline, and several major characters. This past year Infernal Contraption was released, a card game based on the Iron Kingdoms take on goblins and the Iron Kingdoms concept of mechanika. This one’s a more complete departure: Kaiju. That’s right, giant rubber monsters, teams of super-men, the Tokyo Tower being destroyed over and over again…

I’m not quite sure what to make of this descent into matters so clearly weeaboo.

Monsterpocalypse Preview

Several things have come up in the past week or so about the creators of my favorite campaign setting, the Iron Kingdoms.

• The Monsternomicon Volume II has been officially delayed to early July. (link)
• Founding staff artist Brian Snoddy‘s last project with the Privateers was the Monsternomicon Volume II. He finished his part in that project back in November and has since moved on to other things. (link)
• Mike and Alison McVey, two notables involved in the miniatures and hobby-arts aspects of the Privateer Press product lines, have moved back to England and are no longer affiliated with the company, (link)

My, but that’s a lot to chew on. The departure of Snoddy is quite a blow. Years ago when I was first exposed to the Witchfire Trilogy, it was the outstanding black and white artwork that first hooked my attention and helped shape my conception of the setting. I very much look forward to whatever his next project is.