Brazen Wolfe Tabletop

Hi all and welcome to another night at Brazen Wolfe Tabletop. Tonight I don’t have much planned for new content (as this week is really not producing anything new as such) but tonight being about secondary plot hooks, twists, turns or pivots I want to just touch on something that we may all have experienced on or off the table.

That pivot or shift in direction.

Now when it comes to me painting miniatures it happens all the time, I blame myself firstly and all the awesome influencers and other painters out there who produce simply awesome miniatures and pieces of art that I think to myself “Wow, that’s awesome. I am going to incorporate that in my current project”. This isn’t inherently a bad thing but it can be dangerous to your project as with Warhammer in general the idea of painting these many models is, generally, to have them look like a cohesive force across the unit they are in and then across the army as a whole.

For D&D or other TTRPGs its not so bad as the mid-session pivot may be, let’s use a recent example, that the Family are not actually the ones who are evil, that Katya’s grief at losing her parents was soo great that her un disciplined divine power was simply too much to control and she unknowingly created this mass compulsion (see the spell command) across the village. Now that is a very different outcome to the one we ended up going ahead with but its not a bad thing.

Shifts like this can be moments that really define the uniqueness of the adventure and in hindsight I may have even gone with the “Katya’s power was too great” approach instead of the “Keep the magical maiden safe for our dark master by manipulating and lying to her” one we went with. I think the end result for my party would be the same, there would be a search, a learning, a confrontation of sorts but the ending may have resulted in “The Family” being spared as opposed to being put to the pyre.

Sometimes these pivots are not just limited to a painting and army theme or a single adventure twist but can be for an entire TTRPG System. I have used D&D for just about all of my TTRPGs but I have actually ended up shifting from D&D 5e to utilising Open Legend RPG for an adventure campaign I was running because I felt and saw that Open Legend RPG was more versatile, easier to use and fit the setting a bit easier than D&D. To make my life easier was the first deciding point, the second was to discuss it with my players and after realising that they too were excited for the switch of gaming system then the decision was easy. But that was the clincher, making sure the players were involved in that decision – it’s not going to work shifting from one system to another if no one wants to play in that system so that was the deciding factor, as opposed to the first point that made me explore that as an option.

Regardless of the shift it can be a success story like a different TTRPG system or a potential to learn and explore something for next time, like a change in the potential outcome of a adventure plot or it could… sadly… result in the delay of painting your Skaven army for close to two years, yeah, I really should finish them.

Change is a good thing in our hobby space and if you approach it wisely and understand the potential outcome of these changes before jumping both feet first then they can result in some great hobby.

That’s all for tonight, don’t forget to explore your options out there and, as always, don’t forget to roll with advantage,
The Brazen Wolfe