...and a Brace of Pistols is a fascinating blog by a guy named Tom. I don't know Tom, but he has done a fantastic job of researching and writing up Early Modern Frankfurt. I love the city write up and the map is great. I need to figure out how to create semi-transparent numbers on my city maps.

Now I have to send my Honor+Intrigue PCs to Frankfurt.

Take a look!

I have never heard of the Witch Hunter RPG and "horror swashbuckling" sounds awesome. Tell us more!

Quote from: Spinachcat;830405I have never heard of the Witch Hunter RPG and "horror swashbuckling" sounds awesome. Tell us more!

I got nothing. I don't know Tom and I don't have the game. But I'm interested in the Early Modern Period and I totally stole his information on Frankfurt. Check out the guy's blog, he talks about the game some.

Well this is kinda the last place I expected to start blowing up on my blog stats.    I guess this is as good a time as any to make my first post here.  I've been lurking for a few months.

So anyway, hey guys!  Thanks for the kind words about the Frankfurt gaz and the Brace of Pistols blog.  It's still kind of a new thing for me. I just got tired of throwing out ideas and materials on this message board or that and watching them match steadily down the drain of time.  And lately it looks like all the good discussion of actual material is being done on the blogs, so I figured I'd go ahead and start one.  

Frankfurt was kind of a bear, and I probably dug a lot deeper than I needed to.  But it felt right.  It's the thing I wrestle with the most running a historical setting.  I don't need to know what all the city guilds were, or who was on the city council, or what the inside of a 17th Century half-timber warehouse looks like, but dammit I WANT to know.  So Frankfurt grew from a potential stop over for the group to something that could accommodate a lot more play from the whole group.  There's a lot of stuff that isn't up there for everyone to see, mostly stuff specific to WH and the PCs' backgrounds.  So I'm really glad you guys like it.  I have a treatment of Strasbourg that's almost as detailed that is on my laundry list of things to post.

Witch Hunter is sort of Solomon Kane with the serial numbers filed off and the alt-history and magic aspect ticked up a point or two.  Very pulp inspired: RE Howard plus Clark Aston Smith with a modest dose of Lovecraft for flavor.  It's set in our own world, in the year 1689, but there are a variety of small changes: the Dutch are still in control of New Amsterdam, for instance.  Sorcery is a known art, but carefully monitored by the Church (in Europe, anyway).  I've been playing history pretty straight in our game because things are getting pretty interesting in Europe at that time.  The Habsburgs v the Ottomans, the War of the Grand Alliances, what needs changing?

The PCs are members of a disconnected group of apocryphal religious orders dating back to King Solomon's time, dedicating to fighting the forces of the Adversary (Satan, Ole Nick, you name it).  Some are more religious than others, and some are borderline agnostic (or deist, perhaps). The superstitions of the time are reality, and these things that should not be haunt the night, the dark forests, the endless wastes, and the edges of the map where mankind fears to tread.  These are shadowy things that bleed in from beyond the mortal world and it's the job of the Witch Hunter to stomp them to a bloody pulp.  That simplifies things a bit, and the setting offers plenty of history that doesn't make things easy for the players.  Pretty much every known religion (even the Aztecs) have some variation of witch hunter (the core rules focus on Christianity, Judaism and Islam but leave the door open for anything).  

The system is a bit World of Darkness by way of 7th Sea: d10 dice pools, roll Attribute + Skill over fixed target number, count successes.  Combat offers just enough tactical to keep it interesting and satisfy the Organized Play fanbase.  It has more options than AD&D, but not as tactical as Savage Worlds and no where near as eyebleedingly painful as Pathfinder.  The PCs are big damn heroes but end up fighting bigger damn monsters.  Putting down mooks is fun and easy, but a massive swarm of spiders hurtling down the hall towards you can still send the PLAYERS into a panic.  We've been having a good time with it, though after a year and a half of regular play, we've started to fine tune a few things to get the experience right.

To give you an idea of what play has been like in our campaign, the players started in Strasbourg investigating a coven of witches who were plotting to turn a simmering cauldron of religious strife into a full blown inferno.  One of the characters, a North African witch hunter, has been hunting a werewolf who killed his patron and has only recently discovered that he is part of a whole mercenary company of old world werewolves (who are just the vanguard of an even bigger threat).  The group trudged through the wintery ruins of Worms where a pair of wyverns had roosted and were preying on the locals.  Now they've move up the Rhein to Frankfurt to investigate a shadowy criminal organization that has a bounty on the head of one of the PCs.  As part of that, they've gotten wind of a whole company of financiers who appear to be in league with the Adversary.

So yeah, it's been a lot of fun.  Very fun game with plenty of room for growth.  And much easier to manage (surprisingly) than the Savage Worlds of Solomon Kane campaign that came before it.  

BTW Bren, the transparent numbers on the map where easy...in Photoshop anyway.  Put all of them in a layer folder and drop the opacity of all of them in one step.  Done!

Tom
BluSponge pretty much everywhere

Quote from: Blusponge;830426BTW Bren, the transparent numbers on the map where easy...in Photoshop anyway.  Put all of them in a layer folder and drop the opacity of all of them in one step.  Done!

Tom

Thanks Tom. That old town map looks really good. And I really appreciated the detail in your first post on Frankfurt. Having done a lot of searching for data on Paris, Lyon, Brussels, and Amsterdam I can appreciate how much effort you went to gathering information.

Photoshop layers totally make sense. I haven't used Photoshop in about 10 years and I don't have Photoshop on my computer though it's on one of the many machines we have here at home. Given how much time I've spent brute forcing stuff in Paint, I should spend the time or money to get Photoshop on my laptop and relearn the program.

BTW, I heard about your blog from Black Vulmea's site. I took tons of stuff from his Obsidian Portal site for Flashing Blades.

Bren,

I hear ya!  That's why I posted the source links with the Frankfurt Gazetteer.  Digging through layers and layers of useless Google searches bore some fruit and I figured it would be helpful to anyone who wanted to build on what I put up.  One thing I found, Google Translator+Foreign Wiki=GOLD!

What sort of computer are you using?  Lots of good options out there.  Even at $15/month, Photoshop is a lot of muscle for map making.  If you have a Mac, Pixelmator is a rock star!  Otherwise, you might look for a copy of Photoshop Elements.  It can probably do the stuff you need with a lot less headaches...once you get past the learning curve that is.

Black Vulmea's site!  Love it!!  His hiatus was one of the reasons I decided to jump in.  I've been working with his Random Encounter posts to put something together for Frankfurt.  I wish Obsidian Portal was more iPad/iPhone friendly.  It would make searching through it easier for me.  

BTW, thanks for introducing me to the crowd here. Really appreciate the kind words.

Tom

I'll just second the recommendation. "...and a Brace of Pistols" is informative, easy to understand and well written. A great resource for any game set in the period, and something I've been really looking at for my own games.

And Tom just posted some more information on Frankfurt covering FIGHTING GUILDS/ACADEMIES and RENOWNED MAGI OF FRANKFURT.

Check it out!

Welcome Blusponge!!

Is the Witch Hunter RPG something you are selling? Free PDF? Or something you are planning to launch? Kickstarter?

Quote from: Spinachcat;830568Welcome Blusponge!!

Is the Witch Hunter RPG something you are selling? Free PDF? Or something you are planning to launch? Kickstarter?

Spinachcat,

No, Witch Hunter is just the game I'm running right now.  I've been running a game since the 2nd edition rules became available, about a year and a half ago.  The game is published by Paradigm Concepts, who also did the Legends of Arcanis setting for DnD 3/3.5.  The game actually came out in...2008?  Got nominated for an Ennie, lots of good press, and slowly tapered off.  There were some things about the first edition that just didn't work for me, plus I was very hot on Savage Worlds at the time and the Savage World of Solomon Kane came out the same year.  But 2nd edition fixed 90% of my issues with the game.  Plus, after 10 years of almost exclusive SW play, I needed to stretch my brain with a different system.  WH's core system is close enough to 7th Sea that it's been easy to pick up and go.

The Kickstarter that I keep pimping is actually the campaign for the main Bestiary, the Grand Tome of Adversaries.  I didn't write it, don't have a financial stake in it, but it would be nice to see it get enough support to get a fancy hardcover to match the core book.    THAT I'm invested in.

So no, WH is not my baby.  I just put a lot of love into the RPGs I'm playing and like to share.  If it gets other people interested, even better because new people means new ideas.

While I don't think it's on their site anymore, I have a pdf of the Fast Play rules they released prior to the core rulebook publication.  It should give you a good idea of what the setting and system are like.  Here it is.

The Paradigm website has more information as well.  Paradigm does a lot of promotion through their Organized Play, and there is a "Living Campaign" for Witch Hunter with about 10 adventures available to download for free.

Sorry if it seems like I've blown in to hock my own game or something.  Nothing like that.  I'm just an enthusiastic GM.  

Tom

Yay Solomon Kane! That's a series of stories that I think deserves wider praise. Robert Howard was one hell of a two-fisted pulp writer in a wide range of settings and eras. And he lived about 20 miles from my grandparents - been to his house/museum many times.

Welcome to theRPGsite, Blusponge!

Thanks, Pundit!  Appreciate the welcome.  

Just a bump and a thanks: I hadn't caught either And a Brace of Pistols, or Black Vulmea's site previously.

Great stuff (he says, as he reads his copy of En Garde! and By Savvy & Steel).

In the same(ish) period, there's my own Sabres & Witchery available on my site for free d/l. It's inspirations are things like Solomon Kane, Captain Kronos Vampire Hunter, Van Helsing and Hansel & Gretel. The rules are based off Swords & Wizardry, so if you aren't into OSR-type products, it may not be your thing. However, all it'll take is a bit of your time if you want to have a look.