Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 2e: The Thousand Thrones by Night10194

You're gonna have a bad time

posted by Night10194 Original SA post

Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 2e: The Thousand Thrones

You're gonna have a bad time

I think this is no shit the worst module in Warhammer. Thousand Thrones commits almost every sin it's possible to commit in writing a Warhammer adventure. It's poorly balanced (It is entirely possible to have to fight 4 vampires, at once, as PCs in their 1st tier. Or a dozen. This is intended to be 'bruising' but see them survive), the characters are thin and poorly written, it's full of utter nonsense plotting, it's railroaded all to hell, and it tries to stuff far too many villains into a plot that's too small for them, and it potentially kills off Rik'tikk, the cool as heck Clan Eshin 'scholar' who happily told us how to poison everything in the Old World Bestiary. It is extremely, extremely bad. Under no circumstances should you expose Thousand Thrones directly to your face. Not when you can have me do it for you.

Still, I hold out the belief that a negative example can be instructive. In among all the exhortations to find ways to make sure your players' decisions all get them back on the railroad and its terrible plotting, there is actually absolutely nothing of value in this adventure. We are going to go through this mess as an example of how to absolutely not write a Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay campaign. To highlight the mechanical ridiculousness of many of the aspects of this adventure, and because I need something to keep me entertained while I work on this nonsense, we'll be creating a party of PCs for it to follow along. This is for several reasons. One, one of the major mechanical introductions made during this long campaign is the idea that classes can be split between 'Warriors', 'Rogues', 'Academics', 'Commoners', and 'Rangers'. It is recommended you let the players pick the role that pleases them and then roll for class on that role. To that end, we'd be remiss if we didn't make 5 unfortunately souls to fill all five of those slots. For two, this campaign has a firm idea of how fast your should progress EXP wise, and I want to show off how ridiculous some of the mandatory combats are against a measurable team of PCs who follows its EXP guidelines. That requires a team to measure against. For three, it's an interesting exercise to imagine the actual reasons a party continues to follow the terrible railroad before them. For four, I like doing it and God knows I'm going to need something amusing in all this.

This adventure is primarily the work of Robert Schwalb, who you will recognize from Forges of Nuln, the adventure so bad I spent most of the review talking about how it could potentially be fixed and why its 'open-ended' structure was an irritating railroad. I have to come to the conclusion he is just really, really bad at writing pre-made adventures.

Our adventure begins 200 years ago, with the sack of Praag by the forces of Asavar Kul. During the whole 'converting Praag into a living hellmouth' debacle, a Hag of the Ungol was caught up in all the bullshit and became a Chaos Champion. The Black Witch then got her skull stoved in with Ghal Maraz, though she survived long enough to die in a pool of brackish water miles from the city. For some reason, Morr himself decided not to claim her soul so the evil witch could suffer forever. This proved to be kind of a mistake, because now she's trying to drag herself back into reality through a convoluted process involving multiple vampires and a magic child. She also already manifests sometimes by demanding a nearby village send her a maiden sacrifice she can possess every ten years. She needs the boy, the blood of one of each of the five vampire bloodlines, and then she'll be able to eat the magic boy and his power and become fully real again, while also spraying thousands of hideous spiders from her gaping hellwomb. Yeah, that's about where we're going. She has somehow convinced vampires that they will get to rule the world if they come to her with the boy, by making up an 'ancient' prophecy about how they'll rule the world from a thousand thrones.

No, I don't know how that worked. You know Chaos, the instant it decides it's trying to convert someone, persuade someone, or trick someone in bad Warhammer they immediately listen to whatever it has to say and become extremely stupid. So too these vamps.

Meanwhile, the magic boy was born to Stromfel Worshippers (crazy evil shark god distortion of Maanan) in Marienburg. They got crushed by Witch Hunters, who didn't kill the child and gave young Karl to the Shallyans. One of the Shallyans realized he had weird mind control powers (which he doesn't know he has) and tried to kill him. The others stopped her because A: Shallyans and B: Mind control powers. Then another evil cult decided to use the boy as a false Sigmar and a not-Valten. They branded his chest with the twin tailed comet after kidnapping him from the Shallyans, but he got away, and grabbed a blacksmith's hammer to defend himself. A little kid with a comet birthmark and his mind control powers going full speed standing against two heavily mutated Nurglites with a hammer drove a bunch of Marienburgers into a frenzy, where they saved him and proclaimed him Sigmar Reborn. Being a lonely nine year old kid who'd just had a traumatic experience, he decided this was fine and is going along with it for now. Meanwhile, that scheming bastard Johan Esmer (the political climber who wanted to be Theoganist but was kicked back out when Volkmar came back from the wars) has seen in this magic boy his chance to become head of the Church of Sigmar, and blessed him during his exile in Marienburg. The magic child and Esmer stuff is honestly the closest the adventure comes to good ideas.

Into this, the PCs stumble their way, to get railroaded along with the Crusade of the Child and forced into a nonsense storm of body doubles, women getting mutated into hideous beasts, hellwombs, temptresses, shitloads of vampires (if you have a VAMPIRE RANDOM ENCOUNTER subset in your module, you are DOING VAMPIRES WRONG), lots of unrelated plotting, a stolen chicken, paper thin characters, poor pay, at least one child they have to murder, and an utterly miserable time.

Next Time: The Poor Dumb Bastards

Marienburgers

posted by Night10194 Original SA post

Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 2e: Thousand Thrones

Marienburgers

Because there's space for 5 characters with the 5 roles, we're getting every single species this time. A Halfling Criminal, a Dwarf Ranger, an Elf Academic, a Human Commoner, and a Human (Norse) Warrior, made using the Norse rules in Tome of Corruption because it's by the same author and they're common in Marienburg anyway. Our adventures begin in Marienburg, the city of dutch capitalists, which is legitimately a good starting point since it's a huge international travel hub and a great excuse to have PCs from all over. Add to it that Marienburg is still pretty Imperial despite not being in the Empire while having its own identity, and there'd be a good bit of space for fun adventures. Sadly, there will be no fun adventures for these five.

Our first hero is the Elf Academic, Syphan of Naggarythe (Actually Naggarond)


Syphan's career path was decided by a fundamental misunderstanding of what 'Witch Elf' meant. From a young age, she was bigger and stronger than average for an elf, and had always sought to join the Brides of Khaine. Unfortunately for her, she ended up enrolled to become a Sorceress instead; she thought they were Witches. Discovering that magic was actually more interesting than stabbing people, she also quickly despaired of the quality of instruction available to a young Druchii; there was a lot of emphasis on lying to students and encouraging them into lethal traps to 'winnow out the weak', which seemed to promote a very counterproductive academic atmosphere. She eventually signed up for a slave raid and slipped away from the party in the night, deciding she wanted to seek out magical instruction elsewhere and not use highly dangerous Dark Magic 'just because it's harder'. Since then, she's lived in Marienburg, learning what magic she can from humans and the occasional oblivious High Elf. Over the course of her instruction, she's mellowed out considerably; living outside of the authoritarian nightmare realm founded by Malekith and actually interacting with a variety of people opened her eyes to just how nonsense her homeland really was. Now she seeks to hit the road with her 'powerful' magic and her trusty curved sword, to seek fortune and greater knowledge throughout the Empire. She still dearly misses maple syrup.

Syphan has hilariously weird stats. She'd be an incredible warrior, but even with Coolheaded and burning her Shallya's Mercy on Int to get it average, she's a very average wizard. She'll be working towards Light magic, because a Druchii deserter going teenage rebellion and trying to learn the holiest, shiniest, nicest magic she can is funny to me and Light is incredibly good anyway. If the Lore of Beasts worked better she'd be perfect for it, and Fire would also be a natural choice, especially if she 200ed into Soldier or something and started murdering people with fire swords, but Light is still pretty good for a potential 'warrior wizard'. Her big strength is actually that she can use Touch Spells at a whopping 60% WS with Fast Hands, which means Sleep is going to see some real use. She probably has the most ridiculous concept of any of them.

Next up is the Human Commoner, Johan Kleiner


Johan has always had a hard lot in life. Dreaming of being a chef one day, he sought employment in a higher class inn in Marienburg that catered to business travelers. Unfortunately, no-one ever noticed his self-taught talents at cooking, nor that he'd managed to pick up reading and writing; he accidentally annoyed his boss and wound up assigned to cleaning the privies and sweeping the floors. Possessing a strong work ethic, Johan threw himself into his job, trying to come up with more efficient ways to keep the inn clean and hygenic as he tried to study janitorial science, only to be ignored whenever he made any suggestions or requests for cleaning supplies. Until he met a charming, black-haired elf-maid of enormous stature, a common customer who would come by to lean on various sea elves and passing wizards for a look at their books. The two struck up a friendship over complaining about the people they worked with (and over her actual appreciation for his cooking), until one day she suggested he'd probably make a heck of an adventurer rather than a scullery boy. He's decided to take up with his complaining buddy and see what fortune brings him.

Johan is fantastic. He's strong in the arm, quick on his feet, brave, and very sharp. And Servant is actually a pretty good 1st Career for a Commoner, especially as it goes straight into Spy. He's also got the nice bonus of being resistant to magic, which will help a lot with his high base WP and the amount of magical bullshit coming his way in this campaign. Especially once he has +35% WP from Spy. Having Dodge access and 42 Agi with Lightning Reflexes will make him a little more survivable in a fight, and will eventually help him be a great stealth character. He'll never be a 'major' warrior, but he'll be able to pitch in with roguery and fighting both. And hey, he's a good cook and can do some merchant stuff, too. This humble scullery boy can do big things in the future.

Next up is the Halfling Criminal, Shanna Applebottom


Shanna Applebottom was always considered an overserious and anti-social girl back in the Moot. She'd actually sometimes prefer to spend quiet time alone, working on math problems and 'doing figures', rather than joining in all of the raucous pie festivals and the constant socialization normal to halfling culture. It's hard to be a relatively introverted halfling; she's only happy to spend maybe two or three hours a day socializing, and sometimes prefers a nutritious vegetable dish to a giant greasy meat-pie. With her talent for numbers, Shanna wanted to be a merchant or clerk, but the job required too much prattle for her to take if she took it up in the Moot. She moved to Marienburg, the land of Serious Businesspeople, and quickly discovered she hated Serious Businesspeople. The constant theft, the shortchanging, the dishonesty, all of it drove the poor halfling lass mad. They were messing with the numbers! At all times! Taking up the family lockpick, she decided to get into a much more honest sort of thievery, reckoning that with all the Marienburgers lying on their ledgers there were a lot of slush funds that wouldn't be noticed if they went missing. While that worked out for awhile, the thieves' guilds of Marienburg proved to be exactly like the merchant's guilds, and now she just wants to get the hell out of town. So when a big, weird-accented elf lady and her boyfriend (she assumes they're together) were asking around on the down-low about adventuring burglars, she decided to get in on that action. An elf wizard's probably an indication of a serious adventuring party, right?

Shanna is really, really good at stealing shit, sneaking, and picking locks. She's not bad at social stuff despite having a lower than average Fel for a Halfling, either. You can go a long way on +10 Agi, +10 BS, and +10 Fel, even if a halfling's melee and durability stats tank from the -10s. She can pitch in with her sling (which is also nicely concealable) and she got the excellent bonus of rolling Sturdy for her one random Halfling advantage. Add in Resistance to Chaos so she's mutation immune (really helpful if you need to set bombs next to a ratman doomsday cannon without growing tentacles) and she's got a lot of utility for the team. She'll fold like wet paper if anyone ever fights her in melee, though, and she isn't great at stuff outside her specialty. Her Super Numerate is there because Trapfinder is usually pretty useless; Hams never really seems to use traps much the way old D&D did. Plus, Math Halfling made for a fun character concept.

Next up is Oleg Balinson, the Dwarf Ranger


Oleg was never destined to be a great warrior. He's fit enough, and extremely light on his feet for a dwarf, but he was always told he was merely average. His smithing is acceptable, but nothing special. Where he excels is his incredible speed. Oleg won no small degree of fame as a young beardling when he beat an elven ambassador at a footrace during an argument back at his home hold, upholding the honor and pride of the Dwarven people by being faster than a fancy elf. His incredible legs landed him a respectable job as a Runebearer, and he quickly found he enjoyed the long runs and the challenges of navigating old holds and underways to deliver the mail. When his Hold asked for volunteers to make surface deliveries to city-dwarf communities throughout the Empire, Oleg was happy to volunteer. Unlike most dwarfs, he doesn't mind being above ground in the slightest, and as long as he had places to run and messages that needed delivering, he was happy to help out. Having finished his term of service as a Runebearer with a final delivery to Marienburg, he's begun to ponder a career as one of the famous dwarf Rangers; maybe he could help his Hold and see even more of the world if he took advantage of his unusually open mind to explore the surface even further. Oleg is surprisingly good-natured and calm for a dwarf, not prone to fits of temper or wounded pride, and his long journeys above ground have made him able to tolerate almost any companions, even elves. So he doesn't especially mind that he's thrown in with an elf, a manling, and a math-loving halfling.

Runebearer is an interesting Career. Look at Oleg's Movement. Look at it. He can potentially outrun a vampire if he's in trouble (this may be EXTREMELY RELEVANT). Combine that with getting Dodge off the bat, having good exits, Rapid Reload, and pared down but essential Rangering skills and Oleg is really solid right off the bat. His main thing is a gimmick, but a dwarf who moves as fast as an elf (and still has Sturdy to eliminate armor penalties) is a pretty good gimmick. He'll likely end up a Scout, making him decent enough at ranged weapons despite his mediocre BS and making him pretty good in a melee fight, while making him even more Rangery. His high Int helps a lot with the Perception tests Rangers expect to make. His Agi is actually good for a dwarf, as is his Fel, so he's open-minded and quick and will eventually be pretty dodgy.

Finally, Sif Gundredsdottir, the Norse Warrior


Sif has always been big. Ever since she started growing, she just didn't seem to stop until she stood well over six feet tall. Her father, mother, and both her brothers are of a similar size, so she doesn't even realize it's a mutation that breeds true in their family; she still passes for an unmutated human just fine, especially with Imperial ideas about how Norse are all tall and buff as hell. Her father was a great adventurer in his day, going south to earn several chests of gold and jewelry that let him buy a freehold from his Jarl, and old Gundred always told her that Sif would be perfect for the family business, while her brothers took more to farming and Skalding. So Sif made her way down south to Marienburg with a trading voyage, and stepped off the boat to find a job. Unfortunately for her, Norse Mercenaries are in vogue just as much because they make stylish and attractive accessories as because of their warrior's skills. Being a particularly exotic specimen (seeing as she towers over most men and women), she grew tired of being hired solely for her looks and stature, and so she's decided to spurn regular employment and follow her father's advice. "Sif, my girl, go sit in the corner of a busy inn or tavern, and look for a group of people. If you see one that's got at least one wizard or elf, plus a dwarf, those are real Adventurers and they'll get you glory and gold." She has no idea what she's getting into, but the team welcomed an enormous, reasonably well equipped Norsewoman who fights like she was born with a sword in her hand. Even if she's a little clumsy from her size.

Sif is probably the weirdest character. She rolled that she started with a Mutation, but she got a benign (honestly, very helpful) and easily hidden one. Imperials think Norse are huge anyway, nobody is going to think she's a mutant for being extremely tall. She's a huge tank of a woman, and rolling Warrior Born only makes her even better. She's about as good of a primary fighter as you could ask for, aside from her low Agi. Her mutation also gives an excellent +2 Wounds and +1 Movement in addition to the d10 S and T (and the -d10 Agi), which means she joins the Movement 5 club. This party is extremely good at chasing things or running away. Mercenary gives her an excellent start on being a soldier, and being a Norsewoman gives her Outdoor Survival so she can pitch in on the basics of Rangering. She's probably just going to slam straight up the 'kill man with sword' fighter tracks. The team has everything else covered and while the Commoner and Ranger are decent enough in a fight, she's it for people who can really stand the line with sword and shield and swing away. And the odds they'll be facing in combat don't give her time to fuck around.

So these are the poor bastards who will have to deal with this mess. The book tells you to try to avoid killing off your PCs too much and to hand out Fate liberally to prevent this, and tries to get around how badly balanced its combat is by saying 'oh, adjust it to their capabilities, what we suggest is just the defaults', but that's sort of unhelpful. Sif is a badass, yes, but Sif is not a 'fight 12 enemy soldiers with 2 Attacks, SB 4, TB 4, and WS 46 and mail armor, backed up by a vampire' badass, and won't be by the point in the campaign that happens. Honestly, almost no-one is that level of badass outside of Vampires themselves or Chaos Lords. Schwalb consistently doesn't understand that groups of enemies who can action economy you down are much, much more lethal than single enemies, and we'll be seeing a lot of that over the course of the campaign. To that end, I'm glad the party turned out pretty well; showing off how fucked a company of pretty capable adventurers is does a better job of showing the issues in the scenario balancing.

Next Time: Shark Week Begins

It offered the most money

posted by Night10194 Original SA post

Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 2e: The Thousand Thrones

It offered the most money

So our heroes come out of the tavern where they spent a not-inconsiderable amount of their money establishing their new fellowship by partying and getting to know one another. They missed the events of the last day or two thanks to their pub crawl, and thus despite all of them having spent considerable time in Marienburg they're totally unaware of the Crusade of the Child, only that it looks like a hurricane hit the poor district and hundreds, maybe thousands of citizens are missing, there are weird relic vendors running all over the place trying to make a few shillings on the emergence of a new fanatical Sigmarite movement, and the Theoganist in Exile Esmer has been seen rubbing his greedy hands together with such vigor they've threatened to catch fire and upend the public peace.

It is really bizarre that your PCs, who have presumably been in Marienburg this entire time, will start out having heard nothing about the whole fanatical Sigmarite crusade that started on the drop of a hat and set off to carry a nine-year-old boy to demand Volkmar's blessing as the scion of Sigmar. Our heroes being on a pub crawl and hammered out of their minds as the dwarf discovered the elf could hang with him and neither could beat the norsewoman while the halfling told everybody they were spending too much money and the servant delighted in not having to clean any of it up is as good of an explanation for it as any. Being PCs, they also see opportunity. Some kind of crazy crusade that popped up out of nowhere probably means there are people who want it investigated, and they've just spent almost all their collective savings on Estalian brandy (dwarfs refuse to accept you don't drink that in pints) and Bugman's beer. You get plenty of hooks for people asking them to investigate; one's a slimey, evil nobleman who wants you to find his wife and steal his illegitimate daughter from the crusade (he doesn't care about the wife). One is an elf who is curious about this mess and worried it means humans have gotten up to mischief again. One would be the old standby of 'you're all prisoners on a chain gang who get ordered to investigate for your freedom' because bad Hams adventures love PCs being drafted/forced into adventure. The final one is a Lahmian. She's got her own plans for the Crusade and the child, but she's also offering a shitton of money compared to the others and she actually ties into the main plot, so wham, our heroes end up in the estate of Selena Reiva.

She is not subtle. None of the vampires in this book are subtle. Curiously, having a PC with Magical Sense potentially derails several elements of this book, because someone who uses Magical Sense even semi-regularly is going to start spotting hidden vampires (some Lahmians might have Aethyric Cipher and thus be harder to spot, but most are one success away from unveiling) and evil magic cultists. This is never addressed, nor is there any mention of the beautiful vampiress who makes requests like 'only come in at night' and 'Karl may be important to my...people' while never drinking wine having Aethyric Cipher. She is smarter than the other vampires duped by the prophecy, though, and hit on hiring some PCs to investigate Karl and the Crusade and think about it a little before she does anything stupid. She offers 100 GC, in advance, for the PCs to investigate and report to her. This is a lot of money, a suspicious amount of money, but getting paid in advance means they can't refuse to pay you later after they turn out to be evil. Morever, the book says PCs negotiating with her are offered regular bonuses for completing objectives throughout the campaign. If you want to get the PCs to ignore that someone is shady as hell, offering the party 100 karls in advance and a generous set of performance based bonuses worked for Globex and Hank Scorpio, and it can work for you.

Which is probably how I'd end up running Selena if I was running, come to think of it. Beware of her twisted twin obsessions: Her plot to rule the world and her employees' health. It would be pretty funny to make the PCs relatively loyal to a probably evil vampire just by having her turn out to be the one good boss a WHFRP party ever gets. Players coming up with increasingly ridiculous excuses for their boss's behavior because they get paid on time and regularly would be a good bit of Hams dark comedy. This would also work with the fact that the 'separate hooks' thing gets dropped around Altdorf so Selena never actually betrays the party or anything in the written module. The few times she does pop up are exclusively moments where she sends gifts to help the players out if they're low on money and supplies, or offers the bonuses she promised. Ironically, Selena really is the best boss the PCs can pick here.

So our heroes take the money and get to work. The first step is obviously asking around. Gossip is an evergreen skill that every WHFRP character can enjoy. There's a huge host of false rumors the characters can learn (roll d10+DoS on a Gossip test on every successful Gossip test, if you get over 10 you get the true story of Karl but no indicator it's the true story). Once they learn a little more, there's a Gossip-10 To Continue Plot to hear about the people who didn't believe in Karl and how one of them was hung up from a gibbet to die of exposure for her blasphemy. This is the original Shallyan Abbess who tried to kill the boy when she realized he had powers.

While they ask around and learn about the many different miraculous emergences of Karl, Sigmar Reborn, or Karl, Scion of Sigmar (no-one can quite agree on who Karl is) they can potentially run into people whose lives were ruined by the religious mania by failing Gossip by 20 or more, at which point they need to scarper or calm things down or their asking around triggers a brawl because tempers are raw. This event is mostly resolved by Johan and Syphan pulling Sif away before she can get into a proper fistfight, which she is definitely up for, while Shanna explains things to an angry burgher and calms things down. Getting in a real fight (anyone drawing weapons) leads the everpresent Warhammer Cops, who you're going to get real familiar with, to instantly arrive and start arresting people. Every city in the Old World, despite being a broken down cesspit of violence in Schwalb's writing on the setting, has a dedicated police force that will not stop until any violent action by PCs that wasn't a major campaign setpiece is thoroughly investigated. They are also always available to be used as a revenge plot by any and all parties the PCs may have done any crimes to. One wonders how criminals make a living in the Old World with these guys around, until you notice they only seem to apply this level of attention to PCs.

My bitterness about this is going to make a lot more sense as the campaign goes on. Suffice to say most places can spare 30 armed men if they need to to annoy the PCs at the drop of a hat, but very few have those to help the PCs fight beastmen.

Anyway, the PCs also run into a shitty little relic seller, who tries to get them to buy false relics of The Child. One of his relics is real, though; the actual shirt the cultists ripped off the poor boy. He tries to charge 12 crowns for it, as much as an armored pair of pants, and the party has a thief. Shanna just steals it from him an hour or two later because c'mon. This is actually an important clue, because it's a standard-issue garment from the local Shallyan orphanage, which also confirmed the one rumor they heard about the boy being raised by the Shallyans, though they don't know if he was kidnapped by Chaos Worshipers for certain yet. The heroes also find out about the old abbess being locked up, and decide they're going to go have a talk with her, too. Since all this asking around probably takes hours, it's easier for them to go talk to the imprisoned abbess at night.

No guards are stationed at night and with a little observation, you can see patrols only pass once per half hour. Abbess Widmann has been locked up, her hands broken with a hammer (a classic Sigmarite punishment), and left to die of thirst in a gibbet like a pirate. The Abbess is easy to talk to if you just offer her some water and don't act like a dick, telling the PCs about a Witch Hunter associate of hers and insisting the boy had no hammer birthmark (it must be a later addition) and that he is some kind of strange mutant who can warp peoples' minds. That certainly fits as one possibility for the sudden mania. You're not meant to be able to free her as 'loud noises will draw the locals, then the Warhammer Cops', but...they have a Thief with Pick Lock. It makes no difference to the adventure (it assumes you'll leave the brutalized woman to die in agony, which is another unfortunate theme of this adventure) so Shanna picks the lock and the protagonists get the haggard woman out and take her somewhere to get help. They obviously can't take her to the Shallyans, since something weird is going on; her former subordinates are the ones that said she was an evil witch and should be killed in agony, which is not a very Shallyan thing to do. Though 'this baby who has done nothing actually wrong besides be born with a strange mutation should be given back to the Hunters to be murdered' also isn't very good Shallyaning by the Abbess and did in its way make things much worse. Still, the heroes now know something is up with the Shallyans, they've deposited a badly wounded woman with a local doctor to get help, and they know the Witch Hunter who originally found the boy from Widmann's testimony.

The heroes go to the Shallyans in the morning, forewarned things are fucked up. If you use the excuse that you're returning the relic of the boy, you can get in much easier (and get +20 to diplomatic skills while in), hence why they needed the shirt from the relic seller. Otherwise it takes a little Charm. Even if you didn't visit Abbess Widmann, Gerda can't hide that she's no longer really a Shallyan. She's become a devout Sigmarite, but specifically crazy devoted to Karl. She has an inner viciousness towards his enemies and has come to delight in suffering, and the one kind of subtle theme through peoples' interactions with the boy is that Karl doesn't really control how people become devoted to him. He's not a bad kid; he doesn't even know he's doing this to people. But people who become fanatical then insert what they want into what he is, and many of them that become brutal or vicious do it because this was some hidden part of their personality they were keeping down until they had an object of fanaticism they felt justified showing it off. This being Schwalb's Warhammer, this means nearly everyone who meets Karl becomes some flavor of violent or cruel psycho because everyone in the world is an evil bastard at heart. Gerda always had a sadistic streak, she just feels justified in it now.

She gives the PCs a long and rambling testimony that is mostly common knowledge (and partly bullshit) about what happened, emphasizing how holy Karl is, but the real thing to see here is that she has a cruel streak and has taken to having her sisters punished for any infractions against Karl, while having the orphans build a shrine to Sigmar (and Karl), which is fucking weird for Shallyans. This encounter is mostly to show off that something is wrong, something our heroes already knew.

Osric the Hunter is another person who failed to realize how many had fallen under Karl's spell, which is odd because you'd think the cheering crowds would clue him in. He tried to speak against the boy and say he couldn't possibly be Sigmar, like Abbess Widmann, and got the shit kicked out of him. Osric has buddies, though, and they've taken him for treatment and hidden him away. This makes finding him harder; if the PCs fail the Gossip-10 to find him, his friends show up to try to scare them off. They can talk the friends into their good intentions with Charm, and learn the friends took Osric to an opium den for his injuries. Getting past the bouncer is actually easier if you failed, met Osric's friends, and talked them into giving you a token for the den. The bouncer and his door can miraculously resist any PC attempt to force their way in, but flashing a few gold coins to show you're a customer works automatically, otherwise it takes extremely hard Intimidate or Charm tests. No word on what happens if you don't get in.

When you find Osric, he's in awful shape. There's some rigamarole in finding him but it's all time wasting since he's critical path. Despite him being totally necessary, it still takes a Charm -10 to continue the plot. Remember that Shanna is actually good at Charm (even if her Fel is below average for a Halfling) and she has a 37. Roll At -10 To Continue Plot is the marker of shitty Warhams adventure writing. Osric is able to tell them he found the boy in the marshes, rescuing him from the Stromfels cult and telling the PCs how to get to the place to investigate further. If they tell him they're going to kill the evil mutant child, he even tosses them 10 crowns from his remaining funds to help them, so we'll say our heroes read the room and tell the Witch Hunter what he wants to hear. He tells them to show no mercy to Chaos, even if it's innocent, they get their money and their next plot coupon, and they walk out of the place without further incident, leaving him to be treated. They go report that the child was found with a weird cult, and if you do this, Selena actually pays each PC 2 GC for their work so far to help them get guides and supplies for their trip into the Marsh, but only if they report they're going to do so. She likes initiative.

None of the other potential employers do anything but tell you to get in there. Again, Selena is actually the best boss you can pick. Our heroes chose wisely with the obviously evil vampiress.

Aside from the Everpresent Warhammer Cops and Roll At -10 To Continue Plot, this is a pretty standard intro investigation section. It does feature our very first brutalized woman left to die that the PCs are not expected or able to help, and I'm kind of tempted to start a counter for them because it seems to come up with some regularity, along with evil magic temptresses and beautiful women being horrifically mutated into monsters. Maybe we'll hit a bingo like with Forges by the time this is done. So far the adventure is mostly somewhat dull; it gets much worse later.

Next Time: Our First Minidungeon

Swampfight! SWAMPFIGHT!

posted by Night10194 Original SA post

Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 2e: Thousand Thrones

Swampfight! SWAMPFIGHT!

Hey, it's our first major combat section of the game. One of the other things I generally notice in Thousand Thrones is how long everything is. Nothing is ever 'let's get this simple bit out of the way to get on to the main event'. Everything is a production. So too going to the evil swamp temple.The PCs need a guide, and are introduced to Herr Jekil Sumpfmund, a lunatic swamper who loves the marshes and wants to show off the glory of nature to the protagonists. Buying his pamphlets on the wonders of the marsh actually gives the PCs +10 to Outdoor Survival while there, so they do so out of morbid curiosity. After Syphan, Johan, and Shanna finish reading it aloud to Sif and Oleg, the latter remarks he's an awful lot more ready to avoid anything Jekil is excited about once they get there. All in all, the three day tour and pamphlets will cost them a trivial amount of money (six shillings, 6 pence). If I'm honest, I very rarely end up tracking shillings and pence when I'm GMing because almost everything important to adventuring costs crowns and PCs mostly deal in those. When you're carrying 120 gold crowns from your job so far, and there's 24 shillings to the crown, a handful of shillings doesn't matter much.

Realizing they're heading into a dungeon, they also take accounting of their gear. I forgot about the bonuses Mercs get from Career Compendium, and this is a good chance to finally really demonstrate how useless it is, so Sif gains Frenzy (She gets a choice between it and Menacing). She knows how to play the part of a Norse Warrior for potential employers, but is understandably reluctant to actually do it since it's a good way to get yourself killed for little benefit in a real fight. She also gets a second hand weapon, in case they meet anyone who needs to be armed during their trips. The first thing they do is fill in everyone's armor to full leathers, at least; they're going into a shitty swamp, exposed surfaces invite more bullshit. This costs them 24 GC from the party funds to armor Oleg and Johan's pants; an important endeavor. I've seen Stand By Me. I know what happens to unprotected people in leech-filled hellwater. Between personal funds and stuff, they have 111 GC left in the pot. They get a shield for Johan and Oleg, in case they end up in the thick of things with their hand weapons, taking them to 91 but ensuring the two secondary fighters (they both have Dodge, it qualifies) won't just fold. Finally, they spend 55 on getting some sleeves and pants added to Sif's mail. She's not quite in full medium armor, but she's close. 36 crowns is a healthy enough reserve for expenses, and they're ready for their first combat section.

This also points out the oddity that buying a Sleeved Mail Coat is actually more expensive than a Sleeved Mail Shirt and Mail Leggings for the exact same effects. You pay 130 total for the full coat, 115 for the pieces to put together (discounting the 60 for Sif's original shirt). I don't know why it's like this, but this knocks 15 crowns off the first full major armor upgrade fighters will often get, and that's a lot of money. While Sif would like a better helmet, the team is not made of money. Shanna will be doing the team's ledgers, as it is her calling.

Thus equipped, they head into the swamps. It takes three days of rowing and journeying to get to the temple, during which they have plenty of time to have encounters. Jekil is happy to row, and the party is just as good at Outdoor Survival as he is, so Oleg will be handling any nonsense they come across while he rows through the hellish mist and points out everything around him with glee. Now, normally this doesn't actually matter unless Jekil gets eaten or something; if that happens, the random encounters get worse (and more frequent) if the PCs fail Outdoor Survival rolls, and they need Navigation checks to find the temple. If Jekil is alive, he's so competent at swamping that Navigation tests aren't needed. We'll be using the method where they determine their encounters by an Outdoor Survival test each day so Oleg gets to do something. One encounter a day, roll d10+DoF on Outdoor Survival, pushing things closer to Hideous Giant Deathsnake Encounter on 10+.

The encounters range from weird to dangerous, with Hideous Giant Deathsnake being the most lethal (A Fen Worm is a pretty nasty, if potentially doable, enemy for a party this level). Oleg fails the first, but not by much, and our heroes roll low, encountering Bog Flowers. This encounter is not dangerous unless you're stupid enough to drink squeezed nectar out of a plant growing around piles of dead birds. The nectar will make someone fall asleep for up to 5 hours, with a Tough-10 to avoid it (failure results in -10 to all stats but Toughness for the same period). So this is just a useful poison your PCs can harvest, that stays fresh for two weeks. Seeing no reason why not (it doesn't take any checks) they harvest some doses of the tranquilizer. They don't have Prepare Poison, but maybe they can sell it or figure out a way to use it anyway. On day 2, Oleg does not do well. And they rolled a 10 on the d10 anyway. So Hideous Death Snake it is.

The Fen Worm is a little dangerous for a low level party. Like many Monsters, it hits hard and attacks a lot, but has poor WS. With 4 Damage 6 Attacks that all inflict a Tough test or take 5 extra unreducable wounds, if it gets lucky, someone is dying. Because it's 'massive', it gives PCs +10 to hit it. At 23 Wounds, 4 Attacks, but only WS 30 (It has DR 7, though) this is mostly a luck check, especially as it starts by testing Silent Move against Perception. If it ambushes the party, someone is getting et. Running the combat off screen, Outnumber and Action Economy gave the heroes the opening they needed. In round 1, it missed all 4 attacks, took a Fury from Syphan that did 13 Wounds, took a bunch of other hits, and seemed to be on its way out. Round 2, failed to hit anyone again thanks to good defensive rolls, got chopped to pieces by outnumber. But missing 7 out of 8 attacks (and getting parried on the one that hit) is lucky. If its luck had gone the other direction, someone would probably be burning Fate or losing a limb or something. Like a lot of WHFRP combat, this is mostly just a numbers check; I'm fine with the combat system being such, but it's important to acknowledge it. Because it means the PCs don't really have, say, tactical play that can mitigate the danger of the Fen Worm coming at them. This is just a gear/stat check. Keep this in mind, because there will be a lot of combats where the simple numbers of battle are heavily against the PCs, and the lack of tactical options to even that up means 'good play' is not going to even out 'they have a shitload of attacks and skill and numbers'. I'll only be rolling out off-screen anything I think needs direct demonstration; most combats will just be my assessment of what the PCs could or couldn't do.

On the last day, despite Oleg's successes, they roll a 9 and run into the other actual combat encounter, a terrible hell-plant. However, despite the hell-plant's annoying grappling rules and it grabbing the bote, it has 10 wounds. And there's only a listed penalty for fighting from the boat, not for fighting from being knocked out into the water. The terrifying encounter is cut short when it's hit by Oleg's crossbow, a magic dart from Syphan, and a slingstone from Shanna, and dies on round 1 since it only has 10 wounds and made the mistake of knocking them into the water. Kind of a nothing encounter. There were others possible, like finding a bote full of supplies with a dead fisherman, or a dead body with a bunch of jewelry who shoots hallucinogenic spores at you if it's disturbed, but our heroes had an easy time due to good luck in the actual encounters. The whole '10 random encounters possible, roll as many as you like' thing is common in these early sections.

The swamp temple is not well defended. There are 9 cultists, but most aren't much of fighters. It also brings about an important problem: Whenever the game calls for Concealment/Silent Move tests, it always asks the entire party to make them if they're going anywhere. This is a problem, even if the whole party are stealth specialists somehow, because while one person making a 49% roll (with a reroll in the wings for Fortune) isn't hard, 3 people doing it is now 3 points of failure and they're probably not as good as Shanna. You also need both stealth skills AND Scale Sheer Surface (which is Str based, so even if Shanna had taken it in place of Charm she'd still struggle) to make some of the stealthy approaches, so...Look, making people roll constantly and requiring the skills to be on every character for the team to do anything with stealth just makes stealth a non-option much of the time, or at best makes things the Shanna Show for a bit while everyone else waits in the wings. There's no real awareness in this campaign that every dice roll is a significant chance of failure. The cultists won't even all be there at once, so chances are the party may be able to win a straight fight with the enemy when they arrive as it is.

The main danger in a fight is Udo and Wim, two mutant cultists with actual fighting careers. Udo is a large man described as 'idiotic' (12 Int) who is just here because his brother Wim tells him Stromfels is great and emotionally blackmails him. He's tough as hell, though Sif can probably take him one on one since she's better equipped, just as strong, and more skilled (He's a Thug, which isn't a great fighter career). His brother Wim is a slim fellow with giant ears and eyes who is a pretty skilled and vicious pirate, but TB 3 and basically unarmored, so he'll drop like a cheap sack of grain when he gets hit. The actual cult priest isn't much of a fighter, but he does have a shark head, which is sort of cool. The normal cultists are just your normal WS 30-something 1 attack unarmored fodder cultists, though they do have Strike Mighty and there can be up to 6 of them, depending on GM. If you fight all 9 foes at once things will go badly.

Still, they're split up around the cult compound (an old, crumbling watchtower and wall) and you can pretty easily engage them piecemeal, plus as noted many of them might not even be in the temple. A 'miniboss' fight with Wim, Udo, and Dahlbert the Priest should be easy enough for most groups. Potentially, Shanna could sneak in, steal the cult leader's journal, and the whole party would never have to fight anything, but most groups will probably get into a scrap with the cultists. It's cultists.

The important thing in a fight is that if Udo and Wim go down, or he's sorely pressed or badly wounded (even if they're still up), the Priest Dahlbert surrenders immediately to beg for his life and tells the PCs everything he knows. Our team (with the advantage of Fortune Points) could likely handle a fight with the six lesser cultists, then the big bosses as they're called back to guard the priest, but as the advice is not to have all 9 in the temple and low level combat is extremely swingy (AV 1 doesn't protect you much from Damage 4 enemies) it'd still be dangerous. There's no talk of, say, convincing Udo not to hurt you or something, either. Despite that being kind of setup in his description since he's not really evil and is only here because of his brother's poor influence. Somehow, the cult boss's journal takes a Read/Write test (I think 4e was correct to make Read/Write just a binary Talent, the games always struggle to excuse it as a Skill) while questioning him is easy; he thinks you were sent by the guy he's scared of anyway, a cultist named Jurgan Baer who he thinks was looking for Karl. The journal or the priest can also confirm the cult 'created' Karl to be their king and to help Stromfels rule the world, but the cult also doesn't mention any birthmarks, lending credence to the Abbess's story. The journal or priest is independent confirmation that A: The birthmark is not a birthmark, B: The boy has powers of some kind, C: Some other Chaos Cult is interested in him (which lines up with the rumor about defeating a Chaos Cultist and inspiring the crowd), and D: The general description of how the boy was taken by the Hunters and given to the Shallyans matches perfectly with what the PCs have heard from other sources. This is, as they say, a jackpot when it comes to confirming or falsifying rumors.

The PCs also search the heck out of the place to find any treasure, getting about 10 crowns worth of junk in the process. It's a living. They also gather up every enemy Hand Weapon, because hilariously, this is a much easier way to make money than most actual quest rewards. Always be taking your enemies' gear and selling it. It's the most consistent guaranteed payday.

The priest or journal also tells them where Baer can be found, so next the heroes are off to another step in their rigamarole of learning more about the boy. This is the last we ever see of the Stromfels cult, so I guess that's the end of Shark Week.

Things still haven't really gotten bad; this was all reasonable enough cult busting, and the Fen Worm was beatable, just a pretty nasty luck check encounter. Next time, we get the first point where I'd have set the module down if I was intending to run it myself.

Next Time: Sewer Fun Time

There Is Nothing You Can Do For The Abused Spouse

posted by Night10194 Original SA post

Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 2e: Thousand Thrones

There Is Nothing You Can Do For The Abused Spouse

So the clues they have lead to the worst part of town, near the sewage runoffs. Being a Nurglite cult, Baer's buddies obviously hid down in the sewers with all the shit. There's a community around the "Dead Canal" and it's as brutal and desperate as you'd imagine. There's a lot of potential for PCs getting their money stolen or being attacked by thugs; this is one of the few parts of town the otherwise eagle-eyed Warhammer Cops don't show up. If they're smart, they keep their weapons and armor visible (don't look like an easy target) and their financial situation murky. The 46 crowns (more, if you count them selling off gear taken off the cultists, but that'll come after the job) that the team is carrying is a goddamn fortune to the people of the Canal. Looking around enough eventually turns up a thief who tells you he knows Baer and what happened to him, but he wants you to kill somebody for him first. For once, a character can be told he's trying to hold out on a unit of armed men and women who look like out of town mercenaries and this is a Really Bad Idea: A successful Intimidate (or a bribe of 4-6 shillings) skips the murder. The money's nothing, and Intimidating the little guy is easy enough for a group with a wizard and a giant norsewoman (You can also just get a bit of 'evidence' you killed the guy from the guy you're meant to kill and fob it off, or just commit the murder, no-one cares down here apparently). Once he's pliant, the thief tells the party Baer used to run with a pretty scary gang in the sewers, but had been alone lately. Apparently, he ran afoul of a gang of gamblers and just got shanked and left in the canal. The gang is well known, so now the PCs need to go get Baer's shit from the guys who knifed him.

This is actually relatively easy. Either you go when they're open, gamble with the gangsters and win Baer's purse, you kick the shit out of them (there are 10 of them, but they're pretty terrible fighters, with no capacity to Dodge or Parry and only very basic civilian stats), or you send Shanna through the back door and she robs the joint. Or you can buy the macguffin for 5 crowns, but hey. Instead, they send Shanna through the back door to rob the joint. She became a thief on the assumption she would, in fact, steal some shit. A simple Lock Pick and Sneak roll, and she's got not just Baer's purse, but a whole day's take of other purses. Stealing a bunch of purses from one central place where other thieves collected them appeals to her sense of organization, and making an extra 6 crowns appeals to her sense of profit, so it's a good night for Shanna Applebottom. It's not actually necessary to get the purse, but it helps; having it and the map inside it halves the number of random encounters in the upcoming sewer dungeon since you know where to go and don't waste time wandering around. Oleg recommends some rags soaked in herbs to deal with the smell (An old ranger trick, dwarfs know about shitty sewers) and the team heads into their very first sewer level.

There's no map of the sewers because they aren't a mapped dungeon crawl. Instead you're to 'ask your players where they're going, then just make it all up' as it's actually a linear series of encounters and time-wasting. Like with the swamp, you roll d10 X number of times to see which encounter they have on a list of 10. With the map, they have 3. You can also pick encounters, so we're going to toss them into the worst of them right away.

A little ways into the sewer, the protagonists find a door built into the sides of a passage. Locked, barred, and with someone sobbing on the other end. Looking through the grates, they see a beaten up woman in a soiled dress with no shoes sobbing in a basement. As soon as she hears someone on the other end of the locked door, she rattles it and begs for help. Before Shanna can get her lockpicks out, Sif makes the Str-10 check and kicks the door in with a crash. The woman on the other side is Katarine, an abused 18 year old girl whose two years of marriage to a petty merchant have resulted in bruises, scars, and being locked in a basement and only let out to clean and cook for her husband. The book posits you can let her out and ignore her, at which point she's horribly murdered by ghouls trying to escape the sewers. You can go up and beat the shit out of her husband, at which point she's accused of his murder/assault, you ruin her life, and 'she seeks revenge'. Or you can take her with you, which says she's a liability and the sewers will try to kill her. Those are the three options. Despite this being intended to give the PCs a way back out of the sewer to go get healing or whatever, there's no option to just, like...escort her upstairs, tell her husband to fuck himself, and let her go out the front door or something. She's given full stats, and she's actually a fantastic character; she's basically Johan if he was less strong but more sociable. This encounter is fucking awful as written, so our heroes are having none of this.

While Johan and Oleg watch the rescued woman, Sif, Syphan and Shanna go upstairs. They find her shocked husband, who yells at them to mind their own business. Sif takes the little dagger he used to cut his wife, punches him in the face once, declares that where she comes from this how divorce works (it is, actually), and takes his 5 crown purse. They walk back downstairs, toss the purse to Katarine, and offer to take her with them. She accepts, Sif hands her her spare hand-axe and her husband's dagger (and a spare pare of boots taken off a dead cultist), and they tell her to stay in the middle of the marching order until they can get her some armor. Katarine joins the party, because this is probably what my players would do. Hence forth they have a sixth member.

They then encounter the Ghoul Pack, to show off what bastards Ghouls are, but also because these were supposed to murder Katarine. The Ghouls have two really nasty powers. One, players have to make Fear tests to fight them. Two, they do poison damage and have 2 attacks. The encounter is meant to be one or two ghouls, or more if the PCs are higher level. These PCs being normal, they'll run into 2. It's a short, nasty fight, but Sif's armor, the shields on Oleg and Johan, and the rest would see them through fine. Not to mention Ghouls are living targets; Syphan's Sleep spell works on them. Her crazy WS is really good for landing that with Fast Hands. Finally, they run into some mutant smugglers who have been changed by being too close to the Nurgle temple. The mutants aren't actually hostile, and merely ask the players for food. They're trying to get into the temple, themselves, because they know it turned them and they hope it can cure them. There's a big description of all their individual hideous mutations, because Schwalb goddamn loves long descriptions of hideous and painful mutations. If the PCs agree to help, the mutants help them find the temple faster. If they don't, but don't go hostile, nothing happens. There is no cure and no way to help them (obviously), and telling them there's no cure on the way back will send them into a rage and start a fight, or send them into insanity and 'make them embrace that they are forever creatures of Chaos' and turn cultist after the PCs leave. The heroes just leave them some spare rations and water and continue on their way without a fight.

There are other encounters; you can run into a dropped Poison Wind Globe, fall into a pit that takes a -20 Scale Surface test to escape, fight a sewer lizard that only one PC at a time can engage, get caught in mould that hurts you and then grows and kills you in two days if you fail Toughness tests, or encounter REVENGE from some NPC you didn't murder yet who hates you. They're not very exciting. One of the other encounters is, if you didn't take Katarine with you or something, hearing her screaming in terror as she's ripped apart by ghouls. Yay. Katarine stands out because all the presented options in the book sucked.

Finally, the heroes find the cult lair. And encounter the boss: A lesser Beast of Nurgle. The beast isn't that dangerous (23 WS, 3 Attacks, damage 3, TB 6, 20 Wounds) but it is Frightening and anyone hit by the tentacles has to make a Tough+10 or be paralyzed, losing -1 Movement and -10 to all stat tests per round. If anyone drops to 0, the next round, the Beast swallows anyone paralyzed adjacent to it as a full round, instant-killing them. So one or two unlucky hits can take a couple PCs out in an otherwise easy fight. This team's high Movement scores effectively neutralize that threat, though, and their numbers and the beast's terrible WS make it an easy fight for them. One cultist is left behind in the icky Nurgle base, a crazed scholar named Reuban. When the cult's leader Tobias told the cult to move out and infiltrate Karl's followers, he left Baer and Reuban behind, telling Baer to kill the poor man. Baer didn't, but he also hasn't been down in awhile (being dead and all) and so Reuban is even crazier. Reuban's insane rantings are actually a bunch of hints about the Witch, but it's going to be so long before she actually factors into anything that no-one is going to remember his stuff six months down the line when they face the Black Witch, and none of what he says is really useful for fighting her anyway. There's no helping the crazed man, but he has a letter on him that tells the PCs in no uncertain terms that Nurglites are among the band following Karl and have terrible plans of some kind. The team leaves the man to his fate, coming out of the sewers and heading right for the nearest bath (and to get Katarine some new clothes and officially welcome her to the party).

Then they report to their boss. Selena tells them to go find the Crusade and protect Karl; he's 'important to her...people'. She also hands each member of the party (including the new girl) 10 gold crowns for travel expenses, which is pretty great. She's genuinely concerned about what the Nurglites are doing, and genuinely wants the protagonists to stop them. Sure, she thinks Karl might be the one prophesied to bring about the rule of night and the reign of blood, but no Nurglites! And with that, our heroes are welcoming their new member, spending their first EXP (they get about 300 EXP for this adventure), and heading off to where they'll be waylaid by absolutely and utter horseshit and the search for a stolen chiken.

Look forward to our first encounters with hostile vampires and how this book absolutely does not understand how to use vampires! Be thrilled by PCs being outnumbered by Vampires in first tier! Be amazed by 30 men being spared to force the PCs to investigate a chicken! Watch as all involved begin to question the wisdom of this 'adventure' business!

Next Time: Waylaid By Jackassery

Arise Chicken

posted by Night10194 Original SA post

Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 2e: Thousand Thrones

Arise Chicken

First off, the heroes have upgraded some but I won't be posting their full sheets every time they get EXP or anything, just when they promote. Because the promotion guidelines for the chapters don't actually fit with the EXP awards they give, because this book keeps telling you 'go play our other exciting pre-mades in the middle of your campaign to grind more EXP!', and who knows, maybe I'll put the team through some of Plundered Vaults to show it off too. Bold move to suggest playing the entire Terror in Talabheim in the middle of this campaign, though; exposing the players directly to a better game is risky. Though I think after this next chapter, everyone will have a better idea of why Terror in Talabheim's author had to put in 'please please please don't run away from the main plot, I guarantee it isn't that bad'.

Anyway, Sif buys 2 WS advances and Rapid Reload. Now she can javelin some people or pick up a bow later if she needs to do ranged, and she's up to 53% WS at Tier 1 and 300 EXP, which is kind of nuts. Shanna just buys her Agi to 64%, which again: 1st tier character, already has a 64% on most thieving skills. Shanna's really good at her job. Oleg grabs 2 Agi advances and an Int. Now he can actually rely on Dodge a little and spot stuff better. Syphan takes 3 WP advances to be able to channel her magic and not be scared of anything. Johan buys his one Str advance, then an Agi and WP. They're all noticeably better. The only bit of important bookkeeping is

Introducing Katarine, the Rescued Abused Spouse. She had great stats, they rescued her fair and square, of course they're going to bring her along. To avoid overlapping with Johan and to show off an interesting rule, she uses the few weeks as they're on the road to try to pursue her dreams of becoming a doctor, 200ing out of Servant (and actually spending her Free Advance on Read/Write) and entering Barber-Surgeon, grabbing Heal. Now they have a medic.


Katarine lived a pretty shitty life in the Dead Canal up until now. Growing up poor, this bright and surprisingly brave young woman was originally overjoyed to marry an actual merchant, only to find out her husband wanted a live in slave he could kick and brandish a knife at whenever he felt like it. By a twist of fate, a group of sewer-delving adventurers stumbled on her plight, kicked in the door of destiny, and secured her a divorce by the strange traditions of Norsca. Freed from her abusive husband and welcomed to a company of weirdo freebooters, she's decided to pursue an old childhood dream of studying medicine. With a little help from their thief, she's secured a textbook and learned to read it, and picked up some tools and clippers so she can help her new friends stay well groomed and keep them from bleeding to death as a barber-surgeon. Who knows where things will go from there?

There's just no getting around how badly you need a medic, Katarine's got the base stats to do it very well, and it's a good opportunity to show off the actual utility of 200ing out of a class early. She'll be a little behind as some of her EXP was spent on class changing, but skills like Dodge (and Unnoticed) from being a Servant will serve her well her whole career and she really only needs one more advance (Surgery) to qualify as a good enough doctor. She's got all kinds of options after Barber Surgeon, too. Initiate? Physician? Tradeswoman? Maybe even Vagabond and become a second scout? Lots of possibilities. And really, the team wasn't just going to leave her to die horribly or get kicked around by her shitty husband.

Our heroes set out from Marienburg, never really having had much time to have unique adventures that take advantage of that weird dutch city (which also doesn't really get a city writeup, either, which sucks). They're off to catch up to this crusade, stop the Nurglites infesting it, and try to figure out why thousands of people are following a nine year old kid around while screaming about Sigmar. Their upcoming adventure has effectively nothing to do with any of that, outside of some tangential relevance to the overstuffed vampire side of the plot. They'll be stopping in the town of Pfeifeldorf, here to see where the crusade is headed and to realize they missed it by 3 days. However, because they 'resemble a group of wanted men' (despite being 4 women, 2 men, and 4 different species among them) they will be stopped by the Omnipresent Warhammer Cops and their ability to rapidly deploy 30 men to ambush the PCs. Yes, even if you didn't do (or at least, weren't caught doing) anything illegal, this adventure still needs to railroad you with getting pressganged by bounty hunters, so there just happens to be a near-identical adventuring party to yours who have wanted posters everywhere so you get arrested anyway. Welcome to the shit, people.

The bounty hunters in question are a group of noble second sons and daughters who want to change the inheritance system away from primogenitor. The adventure centers around Lucas and Lennhardt von Spier, the two potential rulers of Pfeilfeldorf. Lennhardt is a piece of shit Imperial noble and a spoiled brat, Lucas considers himself a much more enlightened ruler (and founded this little noble militia with a friend of his) but is second in line. Lucas has plans to use a Blood Dragon vampire he stumbled on in the woods badly wounded and surrounded by 'a dozen dead Strigoi' (holy fuck, that's a hell of a Blood Dragon.) to somehow implicate his brother in a blood cult (which Lucas founded, ostensibly to help the vampire regain his strength) and/or just let the grateful vampire eat his brother. He was joined in this for a time by an ambitious peasant, until the Crusade passed through and somehow this made the ambitious peasant decide that maybe this crazy ass vampire plan was a bad idea. Which he openly told Lucas, so Lucas strangled him and then hung him from the rafters to make it look like a suicide. If you've guessed the PCs are going to uncover all of this through the course of a bunch of rigamarole, you get nothing, this adventure is godawful. Don't get me wrong, the basic structure of some ambitious second son trying to enlist a vampire to help him get rid of his brother is fine as an adventure seed, but the details are terrible.

Anyway, our heroes are walking through the woods, not expecting the 30 armed men who are following them to arrest them, because they haven't actually done anything wrong. There's a -20 Per test to hear the bounty hunters coming, but it doesn't matter. There are thirty of them, their leader is a completed 2nd tier character (Noble to Pistolier to Duelist), they have the drop on the heroes, and there's no fighting them, convincing them this is stupid, etc. Arnolt, their leader, steps out of the woods with a pistol to inform the confused six protagonists that 'he has 16 people with crossbows trained on them and even more hiding in the woods'. They suspect a robbery immediately and get ready to negotiate, but the leader launches into his 'funny' schtick of asking them to kindly cooperate because he's got a depressed buddy who could use some cheering up by making the arrest.

He's actually not kidding; his buddy Wendel lost all his inheritance on a bad business venture and his fiance left him since he's penniless, and Wendel really is genuinely depressed and Arnolt is actually trying to cheer him up by letting him heroically take these brigands in. Wendel manifests this by sighing a lot and the book directing you to play him as exceedingly self-deprecating and convinced he's an idiot. "The PCs should either hate Wendel or feel very sorry for him." Seeing as they have literally no way of fighting free of this, Katarine suggests they go along with it. This is a misunderstanding, they can probably sort it out, and she does actually feel bad for the poor sad guardsman. Syphan and Sif want to fight, but are quickly convinced not to by the others thanks to the impossible odds. Katarine tells the poor guy that things do get better sometimes, and sometimes lucky meetings give you a new path in life, and it does actually seem to cheer him up; PCs who play along and treat Wendel well earn both his and Arnolt's genuine gratitude. Being mean to Wendel gets you nothing but trouble.

I wouldn't mind a little comic scene with bounty hunters trying to cheer up their depressed buddy if it wasn't the unstoppable 30 man railroad arrest and the adventure it was leading to didn't suck so much. The Blausblut (the hunters) would potentially work fine as a comical thing for PCs to run into, and a scene where the outgoing lieutenant of a band is trying to convince the players to play along with a play-arrest (if you do play along, he doesn't have your gear taken or anything and even listens to protestations of innocence, assuring the PCs they're just going in to confirm they're not the brigands he's after) would actually be funnier if he didn't have totally overwhelming force that will completely kick your ass if you resist and were actually desperate for the players to play along a little. Resisting naturally leads to a trick this adventure likes a lot: The fight goes until the PCs suffer a crit, then they're forced to surrender. Be prepared for a lot of 'hopeless fight until you get critted', which is more of a problem than the designers think, because crits become lethal or crippling extremely quickly (Crit +3 or worse has very good odds to risk you losing an eye, limb, or Fate Point to being 'killed'). I don't mind the possibility of PCs being badly hurt during a fight they shouldn't have gotten into and that stops there, but there will be mandatory fights that do this. Losing a Fate Point or a limb to a fight that was intentionally balanced so that that would happen to someone before it stops feels like an unavoidable GM dick move and isn't the clever limiter on unwinnable fights the designers think it is.

Arnolt Schade then spends the entire walk into town talking about his thesis about how primogenitor creates a class of disenfranchised nobles who consistently fall to Chaos or heresy or scheme against their siblings, and that if more equitable noble inheritance is not instituted in the Empire, soon enough it will fall to civil strife. I suppose he's not familiar with the travails of the Byzantines and how non-primogenitor resulted in smaller and smaller land-holding throughout the Empire that were then often bought up for cash by land speculators who then became an incredibly powerful force within the Empire and ruined many, many others, but you know, you always see the flaws of the system you live under and not a different form of inheritance that exists on another planet and a completely different era of history. Tragic, really. Also, nothing about the lot of peasants ever occurs to him, and it's clear he partly does this job to have captive audiences to drone on about politics to. He naturally won't really listen to anything the PCs say while doing this, which is sort of a waste; if he was engaged in active and vigorous debate with PCs who are interested, they might end the scene without despising the guy and might actually be amused.

Then they get to Pfeifeldorf, their weapons are taken, and the local magistrate takes some time out from dealing with the chaos of Karl's crusade passing through to force them to investigate a stolen chicken because 'a troublesome woman has been bothering him about the missing chicken' and this is his chance to make somebody do the stupid job. In the course of investigating the kidnapping of Nugget, rightful 7th Chairman of the Tojo Clan and real estate manager extraordinaire, our heroes will naturally collapse the house of cards that leads to the blood cult, the vampire, Lucas's bullshit, etc. If this all seems like an incredibly forced setup for a 'comic' adventure to you, it's because it is. Our heroes sigh, agree to find the damn chicken, and get down to it.

Next Time: The Hunt for Nugget

I Suspect The Omi Alliance

posted by Night10194 Original SA post

Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 2e: Thousand Thrones

I Suspect The Omi Alliance




See, I was onto something with Nugget, goddamnit. One of my consistent problems with Thousand Thrones is it sometimes has an okay adventure setup early on (the next one is actually a great idea for an adventure, and 'find a chicken but accidentally destroy a conspiracy' is how Warhams do anyway) but then bungles it in its desire for railroading, shitheads, and sometimes torture/mutation porn. Right there is already a reason that makes sense and fits with the Imperial tax laws and crazy legal morass that make the Empire so charming in its own way. Warhammer is at heart partly a setting about being a goddamn mess that somehow bungles through.

When last we left the heroes, they had been dragooned into investigating the disappearance of Nugget, 7th Chairmain of the Tojo Clan (actually a chiken named Gretta, but look, I love Yakuza) by 30 armed men with nothing better to do so a magistrate wouldn't have to deal with a 'scold'. Our heroes (who will take on the name The Thousand Crowns, because that's how much they each hope to make) aren't especially happy about this, and are especially unhappy about having all their weaponry taken for the moment. Sif reassures the party she is capable of at least four forms of unarmed killing if it comes up. When you take the PCs' weaponry, they will know something is seriously up. It also feels like an unnecessary extra bit of assurance they'll stay and do the damned quest; there's already 30 armed men (well, 26 men, 4 women) with nothing better to do but point crossbows at them until they look for the chiken.

In fact, let's talk about this railroading a little. At a certain point, it's actually more believable and much easier to fit into the setting to just say 'Okay, everyone, I promise there's a more interesting adventure in here like you probably suspect. Will you give it a chance?' and ask the players why their PCs might agree to investigate the chicken. Maybe they're bored or tired, or they're promised free lodging for the night if they do it and it's too late to get on the road anyway. Maybe they get a decent couple bottles of wine, or a few crowns for travel expenses (they do get promised 3 crowns each in the normal adventure). Maybe one of them likes chickens. 'Why do you guys look into the chicken' is easier than 'I took your weapons and a large party of armed men are watching you at crossbowpoint'. The latter is not only ridiculous, it pisses players off and makes them look for ways to fuck with the scenario. You don't get players to 'play along' at gunpoint, you just cause them to try to run away from main plots (I think Thousand Thrones' style of writing is one of the reasons Terror in Talabheim had to spend so much time on 'how to convince players not to run away') because fuck dealing with this.

Oh, also, if you absolutely refuse, you will later be attacked by 12 vampires while you have no weapons in an effort to punish you by forcing you to burn Fate since you didn't play along with the adventure. While locked in stocks. The 12 vampires of 'fuck you for not going with my railroad' are something to keep in mind.

The PCs are assigned a helper, the town scribe Dwali. Dwali is an exiled dwarf who annoyed the Longbeards and Loremasters back home, and he's basically a petty little shit. He knows humans think of dwarfs as two-legged, bearded grudging machines, and he uses a mixture of petty bureaucracy and this reputation for grudging to always pretend to take offense at everything and try to make humans uncomfortable. He also uses a lot of khazalid to try to make people misinterpret him so he can chew them out, because he's a piece of shit (like most Thousand Thrones characters). If you have a dwarf like Oleg, he actively tries to avoid them. He can point out everyone in town, he offers little hints (but they say, to keep him from being too helpful, he should randomly and knowingly lie to the PCs or give bad information half the time just because he's a dick) and he's mostly along to be a jerk. Oleg points out to the party that this shitty little beardling probably has a reason not to be in the mountainhomes since he looks like he's going to throw up every time he looks at the sky, and they mostly resolve not to bother with him. An NPC who randomly lies to you for no reason half the time is not how you do a helpful hint NPC.

Frau Gertrudt, whose chiken is missing, is an enormous woman. She's 6'4", nearly as tall as Sif, and 'half again as wide'. Sif is instantly pleased to see her, because she reminds her of home, and she can respect other gigantic women. Gertrudt is written to be impatient with the players and unhappy about the theft of her chiken (she has names for all of them and treats them a bit like pets), and she's a little suspicious of strangers (logically, because a swarm of crazy sigmarites just ripped through town and stole property and people before moving on, the whole 'the Crusade just passed through here' bit mostly doesn't actually factor into the adventure). However, she's honestly one of the less dickish people compared to Magistrate Thirty Armed Men and Shithead Dwarf. She's (kind of rightfully) annoyed the magistrate fobbed this off onto an adventuring party instead of doing it himself or using his thirty armed men, she's pissed her property is covered in radical Sigmarite vandalism, and she wants her chicken back. Johan tries to break the ice a little by mentioning he's a former sanitation engineer and offering to clean off the graffiti while the others work, and they get to investigating while he mops.

Searching the coup brings up a +10 Search Test To Continue Plot, then the bane of adventure writing: The Follow Trail To Continue Plot test. Remember: Follow Trail is a fairly rare skill, and it's Advanced. PCs cannot make it without having it. This came up in Paths of the Damned, too, where it had mandatory Follow Trail but also a pre-made party without the skill. Even Oleg, who is a genuinely competent Ranger, does not have this skill yet. In its place, the frustrated GM just lets them use Perception. They find a small blood trail leading from the coup to a broken fence after making enough mandatory checks to continue. Look, this is not the way to do these. Perception checks are important, being good at looking around matters a lot. But you should use 'you always get enough info to continue the plot, successes just get you enough to make some conclusions sooner, or move faster, or find extra treasure, or get warning of some incoming bullshit' because otherwise we're all sitting around rolling Per until someone succeeds anyway, which is effectively the same anyhow but with more wasted time. The prevalence of Per-10 etc To Continue Plot is one of the many things that marks this campaign as a bad Warhammer adventure.

Anyway, with a blood trail leading out of the yard, it's pretty clear the chicken is dead. Either that, or Nugget beat up a bunch of Yakuza and escaped (or a body double got shot with a rubber bullet or something). It was probably a fox or something. Armed with the knowledge that something has probably happened to the chicken, the heroes return to find Johan getting the writing out of the walls. This isn't in the adventure, but I'd imagine being reasonably polite and taking the investigation seriously (or cleaning her house while the others look for the chicken) would probably improve her mood. Either way, Gertrudt answers any questions they ask about if her chicken had any enemies. She mentions the deaf old man Eysen was working his field when the chicken went missing and he's next door, and that the town bailiff Neyetz had 'a hungry look' when looking at her chickens and envied them. They now have a second witness and a potential motive, and Sif ensures her fellow giant that the chicken will be found or avenged. This is now a matter of honor and involves someone who looks like her mom. Gertrudt is somewhat impressed. But only somewhat.

The potential witness is near deaf (you're encouraged to have him constantly misunderstand the PCs to annoy them) and nearly blind. He was also recently whipped raw for accidentally tripping Lennhardt, the older brother of Lucas, our actual villain for this adventure. If you'll recall the summary. The whole challenge here is to make the old man understand you're looking for the chicken while he 'comically' misunderstands, and he has almost no information besides that he found a torn piece of cloth in his fields on the day the chicken was taken. It is here that the party having a smart Halfling would comes into its own if the penalties weren't so unreasonable. Once you find the cloth, you can make a Very Hard (-30) Heraldry test to recognize what family it belongs to. Shanna has a 31 Int; she's great at math, but average at most other things. She's not going to hit that, despite Halflings all having that skill. He also won't give you the dumb thing until you go get him some frog pie from a Bretonnian immigrant. One of the things to note: No-one in this town has an actual character. Everyone just has a gimmick. And usually a fetch quest. Stealing the scrap of cloth will be noticed by the town (somehow) and everyone will dislike you, so no, you're not getting around the fetch quest, go talk to the Bret. The GM spent three hours practicing a terrible racist french accent for this by watching the chef song from The Little Mermaid and he is going to use it goddamnit. Katarine offers to have a look at his scars since she's a 'doctor' (she'll get there yet), but while the old man is grateful (after ten minutes of annoying 'comical' misunderstanding) he wants that pie and nothing else. Shanna offers to make the man a pie or something (Halfling), but no. It has to be the FETCH QUEST pie (In reality, there's no thinking about the possibility the party has a Halfling or someone who is skilled in piecraft)

At the local tavern, if you ask the tavern keeper about anything he coughs on you (and doesn't know anything) and causes a Tough-10 check or get Weevil Cough. Weevil Cough causes -10% to everything for 3 days and -2 Mv. This is one reason I've never really liked the Disease rules; they tend to get used like this, where it's just a weird little gotcha. Thankfully for our heroes, Katarine has a Fortune point and avoids being made sick with a reroll. She offers to help (she is going to do this with everyone who is sick or injured, damnit, she need practice) only to find the tavernkeep is constantly sick and nothing helps. This is not a plot point, it's just here so he won't know anything and can cause disease. It's his character gimmick. They run into the Bret, who is a charming young Agitator whose quotes are all butcherings of quotes from Voltaire and other famous French authors written with a stereotypical accent. She's just hanging around working on pamphlets to send home, where no-one can read, while criticizing the class system of the Empire but acknowledging at least it's not Bretonnia. She'll give them the pie if they get her a library book from the a local citizen's private library (he doesn't want to be involved in 'politics'). Goddamnit. She simply wants to look up some stuff from a famous book on common folks' perspectives on the Empire for her own research and writing. Francine Arouet doesn't have a statline, which is a little sad; she'd make a good addition to a party if you have a new player who joined late or someone lost their character recently. The Thousand Crowns already have their 'reasonably sympathetic female NPC we recruited' slot filled at the moment, though.

Note there's also no option to charm her or try to talk her into helping you. Social characters can't do anything to help the investigation or skip steps in the fetch quest. The other guy here is critical path, and Francine is important to learning you can get him drunk to learn whatever (as well as giving you the pie slice so you can get the other clue). Bailiff Neyetz loves to gamble, and can't hold his liquor. As a result, he hangs out at the bar, tries not to drink, and plays cards, a lot. He's extremely good at them, so he gets +20 to Gamble tests. He can be tricked into playing cards with the stake of taking shots (he can't turn down a game) and if he loses 2 games, he both tells the PCs the next clue (His reeve was out walking near Gertrudt's farm when he wasn't supposed to be, 4 days back, the night of The Chickennapping) and 'three or four shocking facts about NPCs' before passing out. Hooray! To learn all this, first, they must continue The Fetch Quest.

The next NPC is actually a famous Imperial Mathematician, which means Shanna knows of him instantly. She is astonished to meet THE Johannes Gephardt in this backwater little town, and she's extremely excited to have a reason to visit him. Gephardt is already fairly friendly and open to the PCs visiting, but on realizing they have a mathematics enthusiast in their ranks who has actually read/can understand some of his work, he's even happier. The locals don't actually like him; they tolerate him because he's famous, but most suspect he's a Mutant because he has pox scars from surviving the plague at one point. Gephardt is also a believer in the strange idea that the Colleges of Magic are a bad idea, since they are 'sequestering knowledge'. Syphan plays along with this a little, explaining this is why she left her homeland in Naggarythe, and Johannes is probably the first person she's met learned enough to possibly place her accent and realize she's not an Asur. He doesn't notice, being too excited to meet someone who will entertain his weird theory about how there shouldn't be a large, specialized facility for teaching extremely dangerous skills in a controlled circumstance (in truth, Syphan would kind of prefer to have learned magic someplace like the Colleges). Still, speaking to a mathematician and an elf wizard makes him happy enough to share a book if they leave something valuable as collateral (he'll help if you convince him you have an academic interest, this counts). Syphan leaves her own textbook On Ye Basic Spellcraftiness with him, which he can't actually read as he doesn't speak Lingua Prestentia, but he's very impressed with it. He also offers to help them research the scrap of cloth once they get it to him.

If you failed the original Heraldry test, this is where you find the scrap belongs to a 'Hollenbach' family. Not the Von Spiers, like PCs might have suspected. This doesn't immediately help, but it will help an awful lot going forward. They get what they need from Johannes, learn about the crest, and then manage to gamble Neyetz under the table with Shanna's math and Sif's actual knowledge of playing cards (and her tremendous ability to withstand alcohol if/when she loses most of the games). They've finally completed the goddamn fetch quest, and can Get On With it.

No, there's no way to speed any of this up! You will go through this long, linear fetch quest, picking up each clue in order, and you will like it! If you do not, 30 armed men! 12 vampires! Thousand years dungeon!

Next Time: Maybe Vampires, finally

Wrong Wilhelm

posted by Night10194 Original SA post

Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 2e: Thousand Thrones

Wrong Wilhelm

So having completed their fetch quest, the heroes go to talk to the Reeve. He's an insufferable asshole who tries to bluster like a living thesaurus, and for once, the solution really is to just punch him in the face. For one, the Warhammer Cops/30 Armed Men/12 Vampires are not watching (though I forgive any party that assumes they are, they have no indication this is the solution and past experiences have probably told them it isn't allowed). As he blusters and tells them he'll tell them nothing, Syphan casts Light to make it look like she's charging up a spell. The book notes you only possibly get information if you actually hurt him and he still lies to the team, telling them he saw Lennhardt von Speier take the chicken. Despite seemingly getting the information, Sif punches him in the face while he's distracted. Syphan is annoyed Sif ruined her 'thing', but Sif hasn't hit anyone all adventure and was getting dangerously bored. Oleg tells them both to settle down. The Reeve makes a WP test at -10 per Wound he suffered to still lie to them, and Sif hits hard, so he does not have the will to lie. He drops the thesaurus act and just tells them he saw Caspar Schmidt (the guy who 'hung himself'; Lucas killed him), and that Lucas paid him to implicate Lennhardt. This immediately makes the party suspicious; the younger brother paying people to spread rumors that his brother was grabbing chikens for nefarious purposes? This sounds like some kind of inept cult intrigue.

Next up, the PCs go back to the magistrate to inform him of all this and tell him they have a Case on their hands. He ignores this, but gives them a writ to go talk to Frau Schmidt and investigate her husband's suicide. Rumors in town are, naturally, that she henpecked him into killing himself (or that the chicken became a giant battle chicken and ate him). I'm going to keep pointing this shit out because it is going to keep happening. There's a lot of ways to fuck up meeting Frau Schmidt, who is 'not unattractive' (her only physical description) but sharp enough to realize her husband's sudden suicide just seems off. They all involve being a dick for no reason. Katarine talks to Schmidt and offers her sincere condolences on what happened to her husband, while Oleg notices something: The beams on the rafter broke wrong. You only get that clue; you need an Int test or to realize out of character this means he didn't hang himself. Someone hung him up there, likely after he was already dead. Oleg quietly informs the others they have a murder on their hands. Being non-dicks, they're able to convince Frau Schmidt they're simply here to investigate, and the writ gets them into the study, where they find Schmidt was also researching a 'Hollenbach' family, and was purchasing sleeping draughts despite having no hint of insomnia. The go back to Gephardt to investigate the family name more, and discover it's associated with a family that was suspected of vampirism and necromancy and condemned by the Hunters nearly 500 years ago. Goddamnit, we've got Vampires in the barn. Someone get the licensed and bonded Ghoul Wrangler.

Combined with a rash of missing animals, a sudden murder of someone who was probably kidnapping animals, and Lucas paying people to implicate people, well...it's not hard to put together they need to talk to Lucas. The only way to do so is to get a letter of introduction. To do that, they need to talk to his friend, Wendell Ott. Thankfully, they were not dicks to Wendell, so he'll just help. If you were, or were more neutral with him, the Magistrate warns you to be gentle with the man and to make a bit of a show of an apology to cheer him up. I'll be honest, the 'the whole town is trying to help out the poor depressed guy' bit is one of the subplots I really like. It's a nice little touch, PCs won't cause trouble if they aren't jerks, and it's kind of nice to see people actually trying to help and support someone who's hurting; most of the people you meet in this campaign are assholes or come off as sociopaths so a little bit of actual empathy and kindness is nice to see. Wendell gives the heroes his signature, and they can either go investigate more about Hollenbachs in the Von Speier library (not that they need to) or go talk to Lucas. They elect for Lucas.

Our heroes have found the information they need to confront Lucas. They don't necessarily know he killed Caspar (though it's a pretty good guess, given they were seen together regularly, had business together, and Lucas seems to be behind whatever's going on) but if they accuse him of it he admits it. Lucas gives them a sob story about how his brother will die to the vampire, sure, but how many dozens of people will live better under him as the kind and just ruler of Pfeifeldorf now? Is one death not worth that? If they say 'fuck it, we don't care', Lucas lets his brother get eaten, Wilhelm the Vampire gets abducted off screen and dragged off to be a macguffin, and the PCs get to leave. Though Lucas wants to show he's 'not scared of them' and so has the 30 armed men run them out of town, shooting crossbows at them. So yeah. If they didn't discover everything, or say they should deal with the vampire, Lucas hits on the next phase of his plan: Go rescue his brother, implicate him in the 'Blood Cult' as planned, rule the town, but not let Lennhardt die. And send the PCs and some of the 30 Armed Men in front of him to die to the vampire to achieve it. It's moral, he thinks! There is no option to, say, turn Lucas in and tell everyone he made a deal with a vampire to murder his brother or something. Unless the GM decides Lucas dies during the narrative part of the big battle, Lucas always gets everything he wants, Lennhardt almost certainly dies, and...you're kind of expected to think Lucas is a morally conflicted and complex character. Also keep in mind this is the first time the PCs have ever met Lucas, and they never actually speak to Lennhardt at all.

To me? He's a sociopath. He casually strangled a man to death and hung him to look like a suicide. He's unwilling to let his ambitions go and is happy to get more people killed to be 'town hero' and try to 'save' his brother, only to have him disgraced and turned over to Hunters anyway. His whole 'dramatic come clean' moment reads more as a psychopath trying to maneuver his way out of being unmasked and caught in the middle of his intrigues.

Anyway, our heroes are up for fighting a vampire to protect the town from vampires, especially if they have a bunch of backup. They make plans to deal with Lucas later, especially as '10 GC a person' is really not enough to fight a fucking Blood Dragon. Keep in mind this is a party on 300 EXP. They've just started, and have pretty basic gear, mostly their starting abilities, etc. Just...remember that during this section. They get Arnolt, Wendoll, the Bailiff, 2 unnamed members of the 30 Armed Men (guess who dies in a cutscene), and Lucas and head into the family tomb to hunt the vamp. They find him having mostly eaten Lennhardt. Wilhelm Hollenbach realizes what's what, and just kinda sighs. "Oh, so I'm being betrayed. Very well. Do you really want to do this?" asks the WS 68, Damage 7, Attacks 3, Unstoppable Blows, 22 Wound, Somehow 1 Fate Point (despite Vampires' entire thing about having no Fate), DR 10-11 Vampire (he's AV 4 limbs, 3 elsewhere; his armor's damaged). While somehow raising 8 zombies from the tomb that he can't actually raise because as a Blood Dragon he doesn't actually have the skills necessary to use magic. If the PCs freeze up or fail Fear tests, he cutscene-kills the two unnamed soldiers and takes up their swords; otherwise he's unarmed, but that really only means he can't free parry. Wilhelm is actually only trying to get away; he's not out to kill everyone here and is just trying to press through and escape the betrayal. The fight 'lasts until he or a PC takes a crit'. This is why he has the Fate Point, so he can't possibly die even if their one crit on him is a lucky kill shot. Because now he gets inevitably kidnapped as 8 Strigoi arrive on the scene. Yes, they're just thralls. But they're Damage 6, 2 attack, WS 59 Thralls. With 24 wounds each. Four attack Wilhelm, 4 attack the PCs, and they fight for 3 rounds until they can carry Wilhelm off. Again: You are 300 or so EXP 1st tier PCs. You are now facing odds that would make the fucking Vampire and Chaos Lord PCs I've played falter a little. Also note: The PCs can have garlic for this fight, and silver daggers. Silver daggers do jack and shit; silver makes a weapon do +3 Wounds if it wounds on a vulnerable vamp, but daggers do 3 less wounds than swords anyway. No vampire has their specific weaknesses listed here, and the 'general' vampire weaknesses traits in the back of the book they all have don't have them vulnerable to garlic. So your preparations don't matter and you can't even the odds by hitting weaknesses.

The 'Strigoi are not trying to kill everyone', the book says, but 4 enemies that hit that hard, that often, and with that level of skill that the PCs just can't really beat are going to fuck them, hard. So you go and fight the extremely dangerous (though probably beatable through sheer numbers) boss vampire, and then immediately have any accomplishment taken away by him being kidnapped and you getting the shit kicked out of you in an unwinnable cutscene-like fight. The GM also decides which NPCs live and die in this mess. Oh, and if somehow Wilhelm is not kidnapped, it doesn't matter; the enemies just find another Blood Dragon for their ritual. So the insistence on how inevitable his spiriting-away is is a little bizarre. And since no-one lands the killing blow on Wil, no-one gets the 50 GC bounty for him, just the 10 you were promised for showing up. Nothing you do in this finale matters in the slightest, everything is decided by the GM. You can save Lennhardt if you reach him within a round and heal him with Heal-10, but this doesn't matter as he gets implicated as the vampire's pawn anyway and probably later burned at the stake. If the GM doesn't decide Lucas dies, Lucas gets to rule the town and you probably get run out on a rail if you knew he was a piece of shit.

If you refused to do any of this, you instead get attacked by 12 Strigoi out in the town, but at least Lucas dies. The encounter is designed to take Fate off you for not playing along or not going along with the 'fight the vampire' party. Yay. Magically, there are more Strigoi if they need to be punishment Strigoi.

Another thing to think about, and the take I'd run if I was going for 'dark, shitty people world': Hollenbach hasn't really done that much. He was coerced into killing Lennhardt for Lucas, who intended to betray and kill him anyway. He didn't have a lot of choice, being seriously wounded. It'd be kind of fun to drag Lucas in there, offer to help the vampire instead, and get a Blood Dragon in your debt while cutting the shitty would-be town hero down. A Dragon thinking he owes you is a sure path to further complications, everything being on fire, and crazy adventures later. And it's not like Hollenbach escaping would set the enemy's plans back any. The other thing I note is the Strigoi Swarm is A: Exactly how not to use Vampires, Vampires should almost never just be nameless shitty mooks and B: If you want a swarm of dangerous enemies associated with Strigoi, just use the fucking ghouls, man! The ghouls! They're still dangerous to early PCs! Strigoi have lots of them! Strigoi are too cool to be relegated to a swarm of feral, stupid Chaos dupes, goddamnit. The whole point of their line is they look like terrifying sewer monsters and are huge and have huge claws, but they're still just as intelligent as any other vamp. Tossing vamps around as mooks is both really overestimating what PCs can do, and also a complete and total waste of vampires as a villain. Faceless meatwalls are over thatway, under Chaos Warrior.

Our heroes are sadly stuck on a canon path, so they get into the fight with Wilhelm, Johan gets a serious hit that fucks his arm up (and thankfully doesn't lose it) thanks to Wilhelm being pretty goddamn dangerous depending on how much he focuses, and Katarine manages to get around the fight and save Lennhardt's life, not that it matters. During the ensuing Strigoi brawl, the two nameless NPCs and the Bailiff bite it so that the PCs aren't facing a solid wall of 4 Strigoi, they don't do much harm to the enemy vampires, and they're left bloody, battered, and lucky not to have burned fate. Sif almost loses an eye. They've got two heavily wounded PCs, there's no doctor in town besides Katarine, and they've got 10 crowns each to show for their trouble. They leave their notes with their friend Wendell, in hopes Lucas will suffer some comeuppance, and get the fuck out of town after grabbing Syphan's book back from Johannes. They're now wounded, pissed off, and underpaid as hell.

They never did find that chicken, though. And when Lucas is deposed, Wendell Ott turns down the mayorship to give it to Nugget, the true hero whose brave faking-his-death (after going undercover as Gretta the Hen) trickery uncovered Lucas's dark schemes. Pfeildorf hails its new, hands-off (wings off?) chicken overlord, Wendell eventually gets over his depression enough to take over as Nugget's 'steward', and the town eventually does fine.

Jesus, fuck this adventure. I'm pretty sure an awful lot of Thousand Thrones campaigns end right after the climax of this one, as the players revolt. But our heroes will soldier on, into an adventure with an excellent pitch that does absolutely nothing with it as they come to an abandoned coaching inn in the Drakwald Forest.

Before they do, they have a brief suggested Random Encounter, before any of the potential bullshit ones: They pass by a party of an elven noblewoman, an Imperial protagonist, a Kislevite peasant, a dwarf runesmith, and a Bretonnian tomb robber archeologist, leading a party of refugees to Middenheim and bearing an ancient Icon of Sigmar. The two passing parties nod to each other, recognizing a strange kinship in how both will soon be waylaid by jackassery. Yes, one of the flavor encounters is passing a PC party off to the Paths of the Damned opening, so the Thousand Crowns and Brute Squad just passed in the night.

Brute Squad has it way better. They have no idea what a shitty fate they avoided by not being in the campaign that is ALL written like Forges of Nuln.

I apologize for the double wall of text, I just really, really wanted to get the shitty Chicken And Vampire Railroad written up all at once, to have it done with. There will be adventures and parts I hate more than this one, but by god, does this ever get at the spirit of why this campaign fucking sucks. I don't think I've reviewed something I found as instructively bad as this since AdEva. This entire adventure is a long series of How Not To Run A WHFRP Adventure, from the linear fetch quests to the railroading to the climax where nothing you do matters at all, the GM decides all the outcomes, and you just get fucked up for no reason with no recourse.

Next Time: The Drakwald

A nice walk, spoiled

posted by Night10194 Original SA post

Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 2e: Thousand Thrones

A nice walk, spoiled

Bookkeeping first: Everyone has a little money, but nowhere to spend it, so gear doesn't change any. With the customary 300 EXP, Sif picks up 2 Wounds and 5 Agi, in hopes she won't get so fucked up in the next fights. Katarine got a lot of practice keeping Sif and Johan from losing bits, so she buys +10 Int and Surgery. She's now a competent doctor! It only took one extremely stressful set of emergency treatments performed under fire by multiple vampires for her to unlock her healing touch. Anyone could have done that! Shanna buys +10 Fel and +5 BS, since she knows now she's going to have to do a lot of talking and there's a distressing amount of fighting in this business. Oleg similarly buffs for combat, getting +5 Str and +10 WS, and he's now almost as good at fighting as Sif for now (if you ignore the lack of Strike Mighty or a 2nd attack). Still, their sprinter-dwarf has a 51% WS, 43% Str, and 41% T, plus Dodge, a shield, and a good axe. He can definitely hold his own to back Sif up and either of them would body an average Beastman. That may be extremely relevant soon. Johan grabs +2 Wounds and +5 Agi in hopes he won't get his shit kicked in in the next big combat setpiece; he almost lost an arm, that would have sucked. Sif probably could've handled losing an eye (it would have simply made her look like a pirate, and ruined any chance she's ever decent with ranged) but a lost arm is pretty bad. Syphan picks up some Int advances (+10) and a Wound. She's really trying to study better.

Now more powerful, the most important thing is that Katarine can heal people for 2 wounds a day even if they're terribly wounded, or d10 wounds a day if they aren't. She also has a 56% Heal skill. Note two of the characters would have died of bleedout (well, burned Fate) with no remedy if they didn't have a doctor in the party last adventure, and that they'd be beginning the next adventure with two critically wounded PCs because there's no time allotted to rest for several weeks and heal naturally. I cannot emphasize enough: You always, always want someone with at least the basic Heal skill along in any Warhams party. Given they only get two or three days between the last adventure and this one, without Katarine's healing they'd be in terrible shape for what's going to be a pretty big (but winnable, if you're in good condition) mandatory combat set-piece later. As it is, her emergency treatment during the Chicken Attack got the two people at 0 to 1, then her Surgery the next day got them to 3 (using Fortune if necessary for rerolls), then natural healing and an extra d10 (and some good luck) put Johan at full and Sif at 12. One more day on the road, and everyone was ready for action by the time they encounter the spooky deserted coaching inn.

Episode 3's opening adventure has a really strong concept that it doesn't do very well. The PCs arrive at an abandoned coaching inn, since all the staff and guards ran off to join Karl. The place still has beds and walls and defenses, and it's raining like crazy for the moment, so it's still way better than hunkering down in the Drakwald. While they're searching the place and discovering they're still stuck using their traveling rations (but at least have a roof over their heads), a fat shithead of a Sigmarite shows up with his Hammer Bearers (religious militia known for their black shirts, who also tend to be reactionary pricks so I make the connection) and his kindly initiate. Then while they're sorting that out, a band of mutants arrives, hoping to scavenge food without hurting anyone since the inn is abandoned. The PCs have to try to avoid a pointless fight with the mutants, who really don't mean any harm and are specifically trying to live without being Chaos types, while keeping the Sigmarites off their throats. Then the Beastmen arrive, besiege the inn, and the PCs have to lead two groups who hate and fear each other to work together and defeat the attackers from a fortified position in the inn so they can hold out until morning. In concept? This is a great idea! Defending coaching inns is a great combat set piece because they actually have walls and fortifications, so there's room for narrative strategy at least. And trying to force crazy Sigmarites and sane mutants to work together so everyone doesn't die in the face of Actual Chaos is a great concept for an adventure. How does it bungle this strong concept? Let's find out!

First, there's a lot of time wasting in searching the inn. Lots of Per to confirm no, there is no food, the well is dry, etc etc. Thankfully, the Thousand Crowns brought plenty of traveling rations and between Oleg, Sif, and Shanna they have a fairly easy time stretching them by Shanna (and Johan! And Katarine!) being good cooks and Oleg and Sif knowing the wilds. Ironically, the only person with absolutely no wilderness survival skills, cooking skills, etc is the elf. Searching the inn thoroughly, they accidentally find a wounded wood elf hiding under one of the beds; this is Lorinoc, our third wrinkle on the scenario. He and his came from the Athel Loren, but Beastmen killed most of his party before they could do whatever they were planning to do in the Laurelorn Forest, and now he's hiding out in the Drakwald. The poor elf is badly hurt and very skittish, but the party having an elf means he'll tell them his story about being attacked by beastmen, and with Syphan's urging, let Katarine take a look at his injuries. She heals the poor guy for 2, taking him from 2 to 4 Wounds and out of Heavily Wounded, which probably hurts his elven pride when a human is a considerably better medic than he is. He's got full stats because he can help out when fighting starts, and with his goddamn 68% BS, Elfbow, and Rapid Reload, he'll be quite an asset during the eventual siege.

They're busy trying to calm the elf down and assure him they mean no harm when a carriage arrives. There's lots of Per tests to hear the carriage and maybe shut the gates, etc etc, but they don't matter and the scenario assumes you let the carriage in. Note that if you refuse the coach entry, the Sigmarite priest goes and somehow gets tons of Warhammer Cops to come attack you, so...as per usual, play along, or else the omnipresent Warhammer Cops will get you. Gee, those guys would've been nice in the case of the adventure, wouldn't they? Sadly, they're only available to attack PCs who don't go along with railroading. Inside the carriage is Father Johannes, a 'fat, weak man who is everything Luthor Huss despises about the church'. If you ever want a wild time, go read the summary of Luthor Huss's backstory on a Warhams wiki or something; never before have I seen a character with so many 'you are supposed to love this guy and agree with him' signifiers who seemed like such a complete and utter maniac asshole. That aside, Johannes is a shitty interrogator of the Order of the Cleansing Flame, a sadist who enjoys torturing people to death under the guise of zeal (not sure why he and Huss wouldn't get along). He's neither a good man, nor a competent man, but his family is important, so the Sigmarites can't defrock him. Instead, they eventually sent him north to investigate lunatic cults in hopes some zealot will 'unfortunately' bash his skull in. To date, this has not happened. He had 12 militia with him at first, but a few have died on the road, and most of the others stole his traveling funds and went to join one of the Valtenite heretic sects. Now he only has 2 and his young initiate.

While Johannes is an asshole, and his two Hammer Bearers are arrogant pricks who act like they're holy knights, Initiate Nils is an earnest and decent young man. His arc throughout the campaign will be to learn he can do nothing for anyone, while he ages prematurely from stress from trying. Alternately, he can become a PC. Unfortunately for him, they picked up Katarine. Sorry, Nils. Nils believes Father Johannes is a great and important man, and doesn't realize how badly he's treated as his assistant. Nils also has batshit crazy stats IF he hasn't spent any EXP. If he has, they should really mark it, especially considering he's explicitly here to replace a dead PC if necessary. If not, he has WS 38, BS 35, S 31, T 37, Agi 37, Int 37, WP 34, and Fel 37. If those are his base stats, Nils is a goddamn genius at just about everything and rolled crazy well. If they aren't, you don't actually have the information necessary to make him a PC since you don't know which advances he's already bought. Plus, he's on the Sigmarite Priest track, and Lore of Sigmar is extremely powerful for a priest some day. Nils would be a really good addition to a team.

There are lots of ways to piss off Johannes and the Hammer Bearers and get them to run off to get the Warhammer Cops, which is weird, because the scenario absolutely requires them to be here and everything proceeds as if they are. The heroes closed the inn gates when they arrived, because they didn't want to be ambushed during the night, and doing that actually sets Johannes' people at ease since the gates are supposed to be closed. Otherwise it's Charm+10 or they're off to get the Warhammer Cops. Somehow, while they'll run off to get Cops in most scenarios, if the PCs demand payment to let them in, they'll eventually pay rather than run off, because 'they're too afraid of being trapped in the Drakwald at night'. How do they make it out to get the cops in every other scenario, then? Anyway, our heroes aren't weird dicks, so they let fellow travelers into the inn to be safer behind the walls.

Johannes arrives, demands food and a bath, etc etc. Johan is used to working in the service industry and recognizes a shitty customer who will demand to see his manager immediately, and has long experience explaining things to such people. The servant takes the front against this dread threat to the party's well being, explaining patiently that the inn was abandoned when they got there, but if the other travelers are low on supplies they'll be happy to share and that the beds and things are still in place. Syphan objects to seeing her friend yelled at and condescended to, but Johan gives her a look to say 'Trust me, it's better this way' and helps Johannes to a room, moves his trunks, and gets to work adding a few extra plates to tonight's dinner. Nils quietly apologizes for his master's behavior, telling the team it's stress. Johan knows it's just the fat priest being an asshole, especially as his Hammer Bearers are the same; like I said, he's done this dance before. Shanna quietly suggests the priest's got a lotta juice with all the jeweled rings he's wearing, but there are no other possible suspects around so robbing this group would probably require outright banditry rather than thievery, and the group really wouldn't want to hurt the kind young initiate with them.

Also note that while well equipped, the two Hammer Bearers aren't really great fighters. Sif could handle both of them at once. With this in mind, their arrogance and swaggering is pretty funny; they look tough and act tough, but when it comes down to it, they aren't a giant mutant norsewoman. Sif spends much of the evening looming over them and being amused by their attempts to intimidate her and the others.

They settle down for the night, setting watches, and Katarine tries to convince the young Initiate his master is being a jerk, even suggesting maybe he wouldn't mind a life of adventure (it's...sort of worked out for her.) after he mentions he's trying to decide between becoming a parish priest or an adventuring Silver Hammer. She tells him he definitely seems to have the stuff to be a real Warrior Priest (he's obviously in good shape, carries his hammer like he knows how to swing it, etc) and tries to imply he might consider leaving Johannes to the care of the Hammer Bearers and coming with them instead. Nils won't abandon his duty, and gets a little insulted by the insinuation that his situation is anything like Katarine's was before she met the team. This is how this meeting goes; Nils won't hear anything against his cruel master, though if you have a PC slot free I imagine the conversation goes differently and thus he joins the party. Sadly, the team had to make room for the abused spouse and so Nils will continue on his unhappy trajectory for the canon path.

Once everyone has settled down, the treated elf, the asshole priest, and everyone not on watch ends up in bed after an evening meal. And then the mutants creep out of the secret passage in the well that you basically cannot possibly find.

It's going to be a crazy night.

I like the setup. Jerk Sigmarites are always fun to deal with, Nils would be a good way to hand the party a hireling or a replacement PC (if he had his EXP recorded, or even whether or not he's spent any), and the hardened adventurers trying to resist the urge to rob the fat jerk and be done with it is fun. I suspect Nils is in there partly to keep the party from doing as Shanna suggested, since I doubt most groups will want to hurt the kind and devoted young Initiate. The many ways Johannes can run off to get the Warhammer Cops are all pretty annoying, though, and any of them completely derail the scenario. Which is odd; all of this is intensely railroaded, and punishes you for derailing it, but it's also surprisingly easy to derail. Next time, we get to the meat of how this adventure fucks itself up.

Next Time: The Quality of Mercy

Waylaid By Jackassery Is An Evergreen Post Title

posted by Night10194 Original SA post

Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 2e: Thousand Thrones

Waylaid By Jackassery Is An Evergreen Post Title

Sif and Oleg are on watch, talking about lutefisk and plump helmets and how little Sif misses the former and how much Oleg misses the latter, when they hear something coming from the courtyard of the inn. Some silly bastard put a secret escape tunnel in the well and now it's paying off by letting people sneak in. A band of mutants, led by Feodor (a former tailer with porcupine quills for hair), are trying to sneak in to steal food. Feodor has tried to run his band like normal people. They do some outlawry to survive, but they don't eat people, or run with the beastmen, or worship Chaos Gods. With him are the other two named mutants, Piers (who is huge and has giant chisel hands) and Lena (who has 2 pupils per eye and birdlike bones). They intend to slip in, open the gates for their fellows, steal some food, and leave without killing anyone. If they catch a PC by surprise, they intentionally don't kill them; they just put a knife to their throat and tie them up so they can't raise the alarm. They have no actual hostile intent.

Sif and Oleg notice them, though, and are obviously a little unhappy to see strange people sneaking into the inn and trying to open the locked gate. If there's any fighting, the 16 other mutants outside will try to climb the gate (takes 10 rounds) and join in, though their allies are likely dead by that point depending on how fast more PCs, the Hammer Bearers, etc get into the fight. Oleg covers Sif with the crossbow as she goes to see what the hell all this is about. Sif is Norse; she's more used to people with mutations than most of the Empire, even if she doesn't realize she herself is a mutant. She quietly asks what they want, and Feodor tries to explain. Sif tells him there is no food, and the team just doesn't have enough to feed 20 people. She shows Feodor the empty larders, and while he's disappointed and his people are starving, he understands. If there's any fighting or loud noises once the mutants are in, the Sigmarites come down, see them, and get ready to fight, while the mutants panic about how Sigmarites will bring down the Hunters and do the same. Similarly, if things go like they do for Sif and Oleg and 'threaten to end peacefully', one of the Hammer Bearers gets up to take a piss and automatically spots the mutants and a fight starts. There is, effectively, no way to avoid a fight here. And nothing you can do to calm things down. Despite there being a whole bunch of stuff about PCs trying to avoid a fight.

Welcome to how this adventure slams its dick in a door. First, there are a lot of mutants. Piers is a dangerous warrior, Lena is a pretty good archer, Feodor is an okay melee fighter; they're all Outlaws and have actual combat training. Then they have 16 fairly weak fodder buddies (WS 30, SB 2, TB 2, with poor quality clubs, which this book seems to assume are -10 to hit instead of -5). 19 combatants is a pretty tough ask for 2 shitty religious militia and a PC party. Plus, anyone who dies here will only hurt you in the next sections. Second, what is the goddamn point of a scenario with the challenge 'keep people from pointlessly killing one another' when they automatically start trying to kill one another, and there's no room for checks or anything to try to stop it? "Any attempts to calm things down fail, and the mutants attack the PCs as well." You have 5 rounds of combat before everyone hears the Beastmen coming from their war horns, and the fighting stops. This is such bullshit that instead, our team faces 5 rounds of vicious argument as some of the PCs are sort of horrified by the mutants, Johannes is shrieking to kill them all, the Hammer Bearers are getting their weapons but Sif moves between the two parties and glares at them, etc etc. Then the horn interrupts it before anyone can kill anyone.

Even in the normal scenario, everyone immediately stops fighting with no input from the PCs at this point. Johannes wants to run, but it's impossible to do so in time. The Hammer Bearers stop fighting, but start barricading the doors and trying to block the other mutants from entering the main building of the inn, trying to leave them out by themselves to get slaughtered. The PCs not being idiots or jerks and wanting 16 extra bodies to fight off beastmen, Sif just throws the two idiots back and opens the doors, while Oleg (being a dwarf, and thus experienced at defending fortifications) tells them many of them need to get out and take the walls to bleed the incoming beastmen with ranged weapons while the semi-non-combatant mutants fortify the main inn, blocking whatever windows they don't want to use as firing ports and setting up a fallback point for after the walls are taken. Defending coaching inns is genuinely good for combat setpieces in Warhams; they're small enough (and an attacking force is likely small enough) that PCs can play a big role, and they have actual walls and are meant to be defensible. They convince the elf to get up on the walls with Oleg, Lena, and anyone else with a ranged weapon. Johannes runs for cover and refuses to do anything useful, but with him barricaded into a room he's safe enough. The Hammer Bearers will 'listen to any martially minded PC', so they've decided they're scared enough to follow Sif/Oleg's orders while Syphan gets up on the battlements with the ranged crew.

Two minutes isn't a lot of time, but it's enough to get ready. The incoming fight is brutal, but winnable. The real danger is the Beastman Champion. But the Beastmen also use pretty stupid tactics; they send the Ungors and Brays up first, because they assume the inn isn't well defended and want to see what happens to their weakest members. The initial Beastman band is 27 of them, but 'more will arrive' as the PCs fight through the night. Combat should focus on the PCs, and any round where the PCs are killing enemies, their allies do well and kill 1 extra Beastman per Hammer Bearer and d5 Beastmen for the Mutants, while rounds when PCs fail to drop anyone, they lose a mutant or a Hammer Bearer. I'd slow that a little if the PCs take on Korska the Champion, though; he's a badass and the whole party will probably be necessary to take him out. Korska is beatable, but he's a definite boss: WS 70, SB 5, TB 6, medium armor, 2 Attacks, and a great weapon with Strike Mighty. Also Agi 51 and Dodge. However, he has a secret weakness that the team used to kill him when I was rolling stuff out: He has a middling WP of 42. Syphan is real good at Touch spells and has good initiative. When they challenged him, she got lucky and hit him with Sleep. Unconscious from the mighty boop to his snoot, he was then Helpless against Sif's first hits, making them do 2d10+5 instead of d10+5 before he could wake up. In a dramatic example of why you shouldn't give people stun spells for the most part, he took 17 of his 19 Wounds after he got booped (failing to dodge it or save), fell asleep, got stabbed twice, and stood up just in time to get stabbed in the throat by a lucky Outnumber-fueled strike by Johan. Three more wounds put him on Crits and knocked him over, then for insult to injury, Oleg Furied him and cut off his leg.

Now, normally, you'd want to focus ranged fire on Korska before he gets into melee, etc. I'd make Korska come out of the crowd to challenge the party after a few waves of the normal semi-abstracted combat; as it is there's no guidance on how to use the badass enemy boss wrecking ball. Even without the Sleep cheesing, the party could beat him, but they'd need to focus on him and hopefully have had the elf shoot him, give Syphan some time to fire magic darts at him, etc before it gets to melee. Sif can hang with the guy (sword and shield is very much the ideal weapon against greatweapon enemies in a duel) but two or three hits from a Damage 6 Impact weapon is bad for her since on average it'll do 7 wounds a hit and she has 16 wounds, and her average counter attack does 2.

Whatever happens with the fight, if the PCs are losing, they can escape via the tunnel in the well. If they make it through enough assaults until morning, the wood elf kithband looking for Lorinoc and any other survivors shows up and cuts through the back of the Beastmen. This makes them run. For our heroes, the beastmen back off to circle and plot revenge after the heroes kill Korska. Then get whacked by 10 Kithbanders and their badass Waywatcher-esque Captain. Coriael the Captain leads them, a warrior who hates humans, but has had to deal with them enough that he's made peace with the fact that they aren't going anywhere and it's worthwhile to protect them/help them out when he can so they'll do the same for elves. He tells the PCs (especially if they helped out Lorinoc, which our heroes did) that he'll help them (and Johannes and the others) to safety, as per the treaties/good relations between his people and theirs. He warns there's a full warherd coming and it'll be pissed about the dead champion.

Then he has any of the mutants who seek shelter shot. There is nothing the PCs can do about this. The mutants are automatically left behind to die at the hands of the beastmen, or shot by the elves if they try to follow. The elves will not listen to the PCs, and say 'killing them is a mercy'. 'Elves see all mutants are a distortion of the natural order that must be cleansed'. The elves scoff at any PC who objects as being a fool. Again, there's nothing you can do to help Lena, Piers, Feodor, or their band, even if you kept them alive in the fight. They just get left behind to die or are murdered by callous asshole elves. Johannes offers the PCs many of his rings to protect him on the way to the next town, and they can choose to bring him with them with the elves or go their own way; it makes no difference, they all lead the same place. Coriael and his band will be showing up on and off through the whole adventure to fail to murder 9 year old Karl, which considering they're Asrai is kind of a feat. I suppose they have a harder time murdering children who don't speak French?

Our heroes are actual heroes, though. Since it won't affect the story in any way, when the Thousand Crowns realize Coriael is about to shoot Lena when she tries to follow them, Syphan thinks quick and casts Drop, making him drop his bow. They refuse to let the people who fought alongside them get murdered for nothing, insisting they let them accompany them just long enough to keep them out of the line of the Beastmen, at least. Syphan appeals to the elfs in Eltharin, saying if they leave the mutants to be captured, they may be forced to join the enemy and become a problem later. The elves grudgingly agree to let the mutants keep up long enough to get them out of danger, then the heroes part ways with them, dragging Father Johannes and company along with them. During the walk, when he becomes exhausted, Sif offers to carry the fat man. And 'accidentally' drops him in a mud puddle. Clumsy of her.

And then they catch up to the Crusade.

The whole 'you can't actually do anything, the mutants always get horribly murdered' thing is the real failing of the adventure. If you fought alongside them, realized they're decent people just trying to live, etc, the whole 'oh, they're just twisted monsters and death would be a mercy' thing from the elves really sucks. And even if you refuse to go with the elves, the mutants just vanish from the adventure and get eaten by Beastmen. In many ways, fighting the battle does absolutely nothing. The battle is fairly well handled and their way of abstracting it is decent; the other suggestion is if you want to play it all out, divvy up the NPCs to each player to control. But that will take forever with that much rolling; the abstracted method is better. Korska is strong enough that they needed some guidance on where to put him. All in all, it's a good adventure concept, just so heavily railroaded and lol nothing matters to actually land.

Next Time: The Crusade of the Child

What do you mean you're not up for child murder

posted by Night10194 Original SA post

Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 2e: Thousand Thrones

What do you mean you're not up for child murder

Are you up for some child murder? The adventure certainly hopes so, because the majority of the assumed material here relies on the players trying to help some elves kill a nine year old boy (which they fail at miserably). Something to note is that again, the PCs are likely to be pretty wounded by this point. The crusade is a giant mess of crazy Sigmarites. Karl's aura doesn't actually change a person's personality, it just inserts 'please do nice things for and protect Karl' and 'Karl is pretty cool, yo' into their mental programming. Because of the nature of how he was unveiled to the world, this means the majority of people who decided they were going to do anything for him are fanatical Sigmarites. You know how fanatical Sigmarites can be. So the parade of enthralled people following their savior (actually kind of dragging him) to Altdorf are a zealous and violent bunch who have done immense damage to the countryside and the land in their path. Karl himself doesn't really understand quite why they're doing any of this, or calling him Sigmar; he's just a friendly nine year old boy who's kind of lonely. But I'd probably assume he's going along with it from a mixture of being terrified of the angry shouty priestes and flagellants and excited about the attention.

As soon as the elfs get near the Crusade, they stop. They can sense Karl's Aura (as can Syphan, you'd assume, given her Magical Sense) from 40 meters away. It doesn't kick in until 20 meters. Karl's Aura will reprogram a character if they fail a WP -30 test for humans, +10 test for elfs, +20 for dwarfs. They...don't mention what the test is for Halflings, but given Resistance to Chaos and how the 'Halfing PCs' section talks about them being pretty unaffected, I'm just going to say Shanna's immune. She knows to count cards in her head and recite mathematics any time she feels the tingle of mind control. You would normally want to tread very carefully with a plot about the majority of the party probably getting mindwhammied (even if it's mostly 'you are still you, you just decide this kid is THE BEST KID) but the sidebar says players shouldn't whine about it because that's just part of roleplaying and they need to handle the challenge. That is really, really not the right mindset to go into this with. The bit where it doesn't really rewrite you is fine, and players who were willing to accept 'we fall under the sway of the aura for a time and so our PCs try to save Karl at all times' as the plot hook would be fine; I just don't trust anything phrased as 'you've got to be willing to handle THE CHALLENGE of getting mindwhammied'.

But that comes up later. As soon as the elfs realize how powerful Karl is, a couple of them wonder aloud if he IS Sigmar, before their leader shushes them and says 'we're Asrai, it's child-killing time'. That's just how the Fae respond to their problems, because they themselves have no idea they're being controlled by insane racist trees from a hellforest and a nightmare queen who sacrificed her husband to the forest for power. You know how it is, you try to pull the speck out of your neighbor's mindwhammied child-worshiping eye, not realizing you have an entire log in your coal-black inhuman orb because you're a wood elf and you can't see wood. The elves assume the players will help them scout out the crusade to get to child murderin'; this child isn't french, and so may be a little outside their experience. If the players don't, hillbilly scottish elf ninjas will be trying to murder them for the rest of the campaign and all elf encounters turn hostile. Even if you want to fuck the elfs over, it's best to agree in the moment. The elfs take Johannes hostage, somehow expecting this will make the PCs more complaint and unlikely to betray them (I can imagine many groups deciding to smash the BETRAY ELF button as soon as they realize it might kill Fat Sigmarite) because Asrai are bad at reading humans.

Lots of NPCs get set up in the camp, and we're going to be with them awhile. Butcher Groff is introduced as a guy feeding the crusade; he's naturally an evil Nurglite the PCs will deal with later. They meet the owner of the Reaper's Rest Inn that they just defended and give him back his pipe; this means they have better access to alcohol the rest of the time they're at the Crusade, which Sif is especially excited about. They maybe hear about Helmut, Krieger (no relation to genius scientists, no hybrid mutant pig-boy), and 'Jan', three of the 'inner circle' of the Crusade. Helmut is a Sigmarite Priest, the Sigmarite Priest from back in Marienburg. He's a decent enough sort who just thinks Karl's power comes from genuine charisma, supposedly, but he never really shows much character during the story. He's suspicious of the businessman Jan, because he thinks Jan is trying to use the Crusade to make money. Jan is trying to use the crusade...because he's Tobias, the Nurglite Magus from Marienburg who was supposed to grab the boy for his master originally. Jan's fuckup led to all of this, and now he's trying to make the best of it, plot to plague the Crusade and Altdorf, and kidnap the child later to use an amulet originally created for effectively sexual assault (look, there's no other way to take 'mind control amulet designed to make someone fall in love with someone they didn't want to be in love with') to mind control him and have their own mind-controlled mind-controller. Then there's Krieger, who was sent to disperse the crusade with his mercenaries but converted instead, and who now runs the military side of things. He's said to be calm, gentle, and genuinely excellent as a commander.

Meanwhile, what they're all presiding over is a fucked up mess of diseased people (there's an entire Nurgle cult hidden in the camp, remember, plus a bunch of people in close proximity with poor logistics and planning means sickness) who are all starving, miserable, and robbing the countryside as they go. So, a fairly normal Flagellant Order. Given the man making sure they're fed is a Nurglite (Jan's money and Groff's meat, etc), it's no surprise sickness is everywhere and the Crusade's left more than a few bodies in its wake, either from Flagellants killing people to take their food and/or money as 'donations' or for their refusal to convert, or from people dropping from disease. The heroes have to be a little careful not to trip too many alarms; people have tried to murder the Child before, and the Crusade is on alert for it. And has dozens of armed men and women; many of them are Krieger's actual soldiers, not just Flagellants. They're also followed by some Strigany, the not-Roma of Warhammer, who will be factoring later in an adventure in Sylvannia but who aren't important yet.

Once the heroes find out where the boy will be and when, they can betray the elves to the crusade or they can go back to the elves. Our team goes back to the elves to give them wrong information; maybe it will get them off their back peacefully. When they go back, Johannes is awed at the power Karl wields over his followers; he offers the PCs a ton of money and influence if they'll perform the simple task of breaking into an armed camp and kidnapping a boy who might have magic powers to bring to him. They tell him to stuff it, and give the elves the wrong location. Good thing, too, because whatever you do the elves get a decoy location. If you stay with the Crusade, this same encounter happens; that night, while the elves wait to kill a child, they're set upon by a fuckton of zombies and a bunch of Ghouls! Holy shit, someone remembered Strigoi can use Ghouls! As the PCs and elves are fighting this off while Johannes flails and cries in the background (after getting them all made by the enemy in the first place by tripping on something) one of the Ghouls says something like 'We're drawn enough off, the master has his diversion!'

At hearing that, the PCs break off to see what's happening at the main camp, fighting free of the zombies and running to the tents to find that oh, hey, is the master of those dozens of Strigoi. He's here to kidnap Karl because he has a crazy theory that Sigmar wandered off into the mountains to become a vampire and so Karl is Sigmar and so Karl is a super scion of Nagash and honestly the entire Thousand Thrones prophecy makes no goddamn sense. They arrive to find fighting in the middle of the camp, and the Strigoi Lord (who just uses the stats of one of the mook Strigoi they fought *four of*) in the middle of being killed by the third tier Krieger and his men. That's right, if they don't do anything, Krieger just kills the Strigoi and they were totally unnecessary. Otherwise, more ghouls attack as the PCs join in, but I'd have Krieger's men hold them off and let the PCs just fight Mad Orlock the Strigoi Master. Because goddamn, do they deserve the revenge. Orlock is dangerous, but without armor, the PCs can pretty clearly take him down. He's supposed to escape if Krieger nails him, and in the ordinary fight 'you should consider maybe letting the PCs' intervention turn the tide'. Oh, joy. Fun. Maybe the PCs matter a little to a cutscene! Instead, Sif lops the damn vampire's head clean off, in revenge for what one of his servants almost did to her eye. He's totally unimportant and wouldn't have come up again, so it doesn't matter that he's a dust pile.

Having saved Karl from vampires, and with the elves out doing their own thing and Johannes far from them, the Crusaders thank the Thousand Crowns and offer to let them see Karl. If you refuse here, they kill you. Only a heretic would refuse to see the savior! If you escape, the GM is told to give the players new characters who played along and were in the Crusade to begin with. Yes, really. Your PCs are taken away if you escape this encounter with the mind whammy child. You are getting mind whammied goddamnit. The PCs meet Karl, and check to see who gets whammed.

Our heroes actually roll extremely well (with judicious use of Fortune) and only Sif and Johan actually fall for it. Katarine is still concerned about the kid's well being, because like anyone making the save she sees Karl for a friendly and nice nine year old boy who is kind of terrified and has no idea what's going on. Sif experiences a weird mental shift as her previous object of worship, the giant pile of gold she wants to see herself owning before she dies, now has a cherubic little boy sitting on top of it. This boy is her ticket to that fulfilling pile of gold and glory. She is going to be the best warrior of an Emperor to be. This is doubly weird because as a Norsewoman she's pretty likely to dislike Sigmar due to the cultural hatred of him for making them live in Norsca. Johan is just really happy to be appreciated and told he's a hero and wants to help out. Syphan, Oleg, and Shanna think the humans are kind of weird about this but the kid seems okay. Karl is obviously shaken from the whole vampire battle and seeing a couple of his guards get eviscerated, but his gratitude to the heroes is very genuine. They're welcomed to the Crusade, because the other option was the campaign ending there. It's a tempting option, but I've committed.

So yeah. The bit where you're not even important to this pileup encounter, the stuff with the elfs, the child murder stuff, the everything else...this is terrible. Oh, also, if the PCs try to use subterfuge to actually try to kill Karl they lose pretty much automatically. It isn't until later that any attempt to kill Karl is met with a perfect body double. Schwalb loves body doubles like he loves poop, blood, and mutations. If your campaign didn't end after Chicken Attack, I would be willing to bet most groups stop playing Thousand Thrones at this adventure. Also, I wonder: Syphan has Magical Sense. You'd think she'd have a chance to spot all these magic-enabled Nurglite Cultists or Nurgle Magic in the camp. But nobody ever seems to consider Magical Sense when planning out cult adventures.

Next Time: The Altdorf Railroad

Champion of Karl

posted by Night10194 Original SA post

Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 2e: The Thousand Thrones

Champion of Karl

So, our heroes are at a major crossroad. Even if they wanted to stop the campaign at this point, Johan and Sif are currently enamored with a 9 year old boy. Sif calls him Better Sigmar to the annoyance of basically everyone in the Crusade. Things are not helped by the fact that the boy presented her with a nice silver ring with a topaz comet on it as thanks for slaying a terrible vampire to save his life. It's not an arm ring, but he's not Norse, so he probably couldn't know that was the fashion; she's still seized on the fact that he is a ring-giver and rewarded her with jewelry she can show off for slaying a mighty foe. Even without the mind-whammy she might be on the kid's side now. Johan is just happy to be appreciated for once (ignoring that the party has always appreciated Johan) and is trying to angle to become the Child's chef. He doesn't have one, and Johan has so many ideas for how to help out with his old talents for cookery. You see, one of the themes of the heroes is that they're genuinely trying to engage with the adventures and accomplish goals, as much as they don't go along with a lot of the shitty stuff. So Sif having a comical rivalry with Captain Krieger in her quest to become the best Bondsman of Better Sigmar (Who has not been as shitty to the Norse as Worse Sigmar) or Johan trying to become the Child's personal chef, or Katarine just trying to make sure the boy isn't so terrified and alone are all reasonable responses to plot developments. Syphan isn't allowed to Magical Sense around the encampment, though; if she did that she'd see Jan was a wizard and spoil the plot immediately. Oleg and Shanna are confused by their friends' weirdness, but they still have a job to do for Selena back in Marienburg and she's been a good employer. She'll even send extra money during the Altdorf section! Oleg doesn't break his word and Shanna likes having a good employer. Syphan is stuck in all this because Johan is, and she's not leaving her friend behind as silly as she finds all this. She's actually a little hurt that he acts like no-one else ever appreciated him, since she certainly did; this will lead her to realize he's mind-whammied.

The other crossroads is that everyone is supposed to finish their first career by now. They don't actually have enough EXP for that, so we'll say they went through a few other adventures on the way to Altdorf as Sif and Joahn tried to do some extra good on the side to get in good with the Crusade. That means a full update of where everyone is in their tracks! I'll be moving everyone to about 1500 EXP, as that should even everything out.

First up, Sif Gundredsdottir, aspiring Champion of Karl


Sif has been having a weird time so far. The great glory and gold her father told her you'd find with a bunch of southron weirdos hasn't really materialized. She's killed plenty of foes, up to and including slaying a Strigoi Vampire, and taken plenty of beating, but she's really only made a little money in the affair. She likes her new friends, and they have a good working relationship; that will keep her around despite the tremendous danger and poor pay. More importantly, she's found a new devotion to Better Sigmar. It seems to amuse the boy when she calls him that, and piss off Helmut and basically everyone else in the Crusade. They mutter about Norse savages, and Helmut makes little sermons about how Karl's goodness is so strong it's obviously rescued her from Chaos and she simply needs some time to acclimate. With all the flagellants around, she's picked up the ability to wield a flail and replaced her old viking sword with a morningstar. She gave the sword to the boy, to symbolize she is now his Bondsman. Neither he nor the others really seem to understand her habits, but as she's huge and seems loyal, she seems to make him feel a little less frightened.

Sif is going to be sticking with 'shield and weapon' for the most part, so picking up Flail and thus Morningstars is purely an upgrade for her. Effectively, the Morningstar is just a Hand Weapon that has Impact during the first round it's used in a fight. It's a small upgrade, but significant. If Sif's first two attacks hit like a Great Weapon she can possibly smash one or two opponents round one before staying stuck in. With her full Mail armor and her improved S and T from Veteran, she's also about as tough as a Chaos Warrior, hits harder, and has 2 attacks. Mechanically, it's hard to ask for a better frontliner unless you had a Bret going into Heroism right now.

Johan Kleiner, aspiring Chef/Spy


Johan has finally found a place where he's appreciated for his cooking and cleaning prowess as well as his abilities at adventure. Syphan has never quite understood that Johan really loved cooking, he just hated that his boss never let him do it and assigned him to cleaning the privies instead of trying to become a chef. Sure, the stuff he has to work with isn't the best, and he has to steal a fair amount of it from some of the other factions of the Crusade (which has only made him better at being an adventurer and set him further on the path of The Spy), but the Child himself likes Johan's pastries and meat pies. So not only is he hailed as a hero for helping to save the boy from a vampire lord, he's cooking for the inner circle and actually getting to do one of the things he loves. Things are looking up for Johan. Unless he realizes he's been mind-whammied. Then he might be a bit cross.

Spy is a huge upgrade for Johan. Johan was useful as a Servant (or would be if the adventure ever gave him stuff to do like sneaking into parties, but you know) but now he's an actual Spy. Combined with Servant giving him Dodge and this class giving him +1 Attacks (and some pretty good WS, eventually; +15 during Spy) and while he's no Sif, he can hold his own with his cleaver and shield well enough to actually fight as something approaching a frontliner. Spy also fills in his ability to do disguise, stealth, and trickery. You would think these would be extremely useful for intriguing during these adventures, but they rarely come up. In a normal campaign that isn't so badly written, Johan would be awesome. As it is he'll still be good enough and a good secondary warrior. And the guy can still cook! Plus the huge WP from Spy (He eventually gets +35!) will make him completely unflappable by crazy horror shit.

Syphan of Naggarythe (Naggarond), Champion of Light (She named herself)


Syphan has finally done it! She's mastered a Lore of Magic and completed her minor magic apprenticeship! No-one in Ulthuan or Naggarond would agree, but she doesn't know that. Since she's clearly completely mastered the Wind of Hysh outside of maybe a few spells that will take more practice, she's decided to turn her (laser) eyes in other directions. Syphan has a crazy plan that she can clearly start working her way towards mastering High Magic already. This is not going to happen, but will lead to hilarious consequences as she tries. Now that she is a White Wizard, she's shifted her wardrobe to flowing white gossamer robes that get dirty at an astonishing pace and end up greyish-black, but she still acts as if she's a mighty holy wizard despite being no better than a human journeyman. She wanders the camp of the Child, frightening others by being an elf, and terrifying them by being a wizard when she tries to offer her healing and wise counsel. She's just so excited to have actually touched a Wind of Magic properly that she's not paying proper attention to her Magical Senses, which should be telling her the camp is filthy with Nurglites. She's almost in a good enough mood to ignore that her best bud Johan is more distant and unusual than ever, or that everything that's happened since she came up with the 'adventuring party' idea has been complete bullshit and almost gotten everyone killed repeatedly.

Syphan is going to go in a completely hilarious direction, mechanically. She's got Light, she can do some awesome stuff with it (like no-selling ranged attacks, potentially one-shotting demons, healing people, shooting lasers from her eyes, generating a magic sentinel shield that blocks attacks, and blessing the team's weapons to utterly destroy demons), and now she's going to do something amazingly foolish: She's going to 200 out into Seer and then go into Vikti as she tries to learn 'high magic' (Witchcraft). This will give her some combat skills, and with her natural ability at WS and parrying and Radiant Sentinel/Shimmering Cloak she can actually handle fighting physically, but it will also let her pick up some extra spells. Like Flaming Sword or Beast Claws. Syphan is not a wise woman, but she is an extremely enthusiastic one, and building her silly build will be hilarious. Massively overestimating yourself, doing something dumb about it, and then bumbling through and pretending you meant to do everything is the tradition of her people.

Shanna Applebottom, Increasingly Exasperated Hobbit


Shanna is not having a great adventure. Some of her friends have gone crazy out of nowhere, the Crusade is a disorganized mess of crazy giant humans who keep almost stepping on her or mistaking her for a pie seller, and it's almost impossible to keep the team's ledgers straight in these conditions. She's soldiering on, though; order will come out of chaos, no matter who she has to rob to cause it. To that end, she's ingratiating herself into the Crusade's suppliers and logistics, investigating this Jan character. He's a Marienburger merchant. She knows (and hates) Marienburger merchants. Plus, he almost certainly has the best stuff to steal when he annoys her sensibilities. To this end, she's becoming as much of a merchant as she was a thief, ironically fulfilling her original ambitions in going to Marienburg in the first place. She'll get to the bottom of everything eventually, or her name isn't Shanna Applebottom (See? Getting to bottoms is right in the name). Besides, someone has to worry about the team's money and keep everyone supplied. Gods know they could all use better armor if they're going to keep fighting goddamn vampire swarms.

Since Johan can handle a lot of the stealthy stuff as well as Shanna can, and they don't really have a party face, Shanna is going into Fence. Fence is a fantastic career despite being very short and seemingly empty; it's a big round-house for criminals. It gets some much needed abilities (and a second attack, though with her relegated to ranged combat and lacking Rapid Reload, that doesn't help her sling much) and makes her a very good merchant. This is actually important, because a good merchant sells loot for a lot of money and can whack big discounts off what the team buys. She'll be working hard on upgrading everyone's gear once they get into Altdorf and have a larger market to work with. She's also still a very good thief. She'll be going into Crime Lord after Fence, both because it's funny and because it makes Shanna the party's face character. The little math-loving halfling who just wants things in their proper place is going to become a terrifying crime boss entirely because of her frustration with accounting fraud and poor logistics driving her to crime, and it's that kind of silliness that helps keep me writing when I run into yet another pile of railroaded trash.

Oleg Balinson, Dwarven Olympic Sprinter


Oleg has slowly realized his friends need a shield as much as they need eyes and ears, in more ways than one. Watching Sif fall under the Child's influence has made him determined to make himself able to defend his comrades in case she's compromised; he needs to have a chance of beating her if she turns on the others because of this strange magic. To that end, he's spent hours working with his shield and axe, trying to unlock the true skills of a dwarven Ranger. His efforts have born plenty of fruit. The sturdy, agile dwarven athlete and mailman has grown greatly in his martial prowess, to the point that he might actually be able to beat Sif if it came to it. He can't abide the elven suggestion that they slay a human child to try to prevent him doing harm; typical wutelgi cowardice, being willing to do great evil because they're afraid of a challenge. At least his own elven comrade isn't such a coward. He'll stay by his friends, because a dawi doesn't break faith, he'll do the job he promised Selena, because again, he doesn't break faith, and he'll get them all through this alive. And find some way to save this kid from all the crazy humans around him. It's a dwarf's job to do things the right way, no matter how hard the right way might be.

Oleg diverted into Shieldbreaker because it won't take him very long and fills out his warrior skills. He'll be back on the Scout track as soon as it's done. Shieldbreaker is an awesome 'second 1st tier' for a lot of classes like Tomb Robber and Rat Catcher, and it's even available for non-dwarves because dwarfs will teach tunnel fighting to allied humans or others they can trust. It's good for Oleg, too; the extra Dodge makes him much more survivable, the extra +5 Tough in addition to his Very Resilient from Runebearer pushes him to TB5, and Strike Mighty really ups his melee power. As does +1 Attacks. He'll always be more melee focused than ranged, even as a Scout; it helps him a lot to spend a few hundred EXP on a short-ish second 1st tier to fill that out. Besides, Bardin from Vermintide shows us all Dwarven Rangers need to be total badasses with a shield and axe. I also think the Crusade and his determination to do things the (hard) right way (partly to spite the shitty elves, as a dwarf should) will help his character a lot.

Katarine, Aspiring Doctor


Katarine has seen terrible things since she joined the Thousand Crowns. She's fought vampires and undead, battled terrible creatures in the sewers, and seen a great deal of cruelty outside of the cruelty of her husband. She's seen the cruelty of the people of the Crusade, beating and shrieking and stealing as soon as they think they have divine sanction. She's seen the cruelty of Lucas von Speier, and only narrowly saved his brother from his treacherous plots only to find the man was still ruined by them. She's seen the alien cruelty of the Asrai as they tried to cut down decent men and women who were just trying to survive and who had helped her and her friends greatly in battle. And the cruelty of men like Father Johannes. Sigmar holds no more allure for her, but she's felt the call of Rhya, the Mother Goddess, in seeing what all of this is doing to the poor boy at the center of it. On her journeys, she's heard of the sects of Rhya that help people like her and like him, and so she's sworn herself to Rhya's service in hopes of doing the same. Who knows where her skills as a healer and her new calling will take her?

Shallya would have been the obvious choice for her, but Katarine is a little too active and willing to hit someone in the face for being a bastard. She isn't quite as focused on all-encompassing mercy, and I was originally going to put her in Initiate of Sigmar if she fell under Karl's sway, but she didn't. Considering Rhya has an actual sect of abuse councillors who help women get away from physically abusive husbands and considering Katarine is a caring woman who would want to help people like herself, Rhya is actually a perfect fit. And still fits a healer. So off she goes into the nature priestess track. It'll be a long time and I'm not sure she'll ever reach the Lore of Rhya, but combined with her medical skills the other things priests learn will still help the party quite a bit, and Katarine is kind of the 'bonus' character as it is, so she can focus primarily on RP-type advances anyway.

So that's the team as they finish the first third of the story and enter the next major section. It's going to be a fun time in Altdorf (it is not), but at least they don't have to play a fucking dating sim to progress.

Next Time: Walking with the Crusade

Just The Worst

posted by Night10194 Original SA post

Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 2e: Thousand Thrones

Just The Worst

Okay, Chapter 4 isn't the worst. There are worse parts. Chapter 4 is the most boring. Literally nothing the PCs do during Chapter 4 has any effect on the actual plot. Any attempt at alternate actions or preventing any upcoming BS will be met by 'and then it all happens anyway'. It also features a possible death that negates Fate Points, happens entirely due to a dice roll you can't really avoid (low chance, but still), and insults your GMing if you decide that this merits giving a killed player a bonus on their new PC. Remember how dying to destroy the demonic essence in Spires got you bonus Fate and stuff on your next PC for having willingly given up your prior one to be a hero (and to apologize for how Fate didn't work on a willing self-sacrifice)? This is basically the opposite. This chapter is, no shit, genuinely hard to read without my eyes sliding off the page. It does also feature one of the only scenes where players just have an RP interaction with Karl, though, without any mention of murdering him, so that's nice.

Also Chapter 4 basically makes no allowance for Magical Sense (the chapter would genuinely be derailed if, during the course of looking for signs of a cult in the camp, Syphan ever once said 'I'm testing Magical Sense') nor for PCs being suspicious of anything. I was genuinely a little unsure if I should heavily redact and summarize this chapter since so little actually happens, or just let everyone revel in the torrent of bullshit. Since I'm locked in my apartment due to a global pandemic and have a lot of time, I'm opting for the latter. I had to read this shit, you get to read my annoyance and boredom at it. I wonder if there's just something about Altdorf that makes adventure writers write really boring adventures in it? This chapter reminds me a lot of Forges of Nuln: It's an 'investigation' on a 'timetable' and the timetable will be followed no matter what you do.

So the Crusade is just about to Altdorf. Our heroes get asked 'The Question' because Jan is suspicious of why they've joined the Crusade: "Why are you here?", asked by Karl, meaning anyone under his spell needs a -20 WP test to lie about it. Whatever they say, they'll still be welcomed if they seem charmed, but in our case Selena specifically hired the heroes to keep an eye on Karl and protect him from Chaos. Sif just says exactly that, that they were hired by a pious woman to protect Better Sigmar. Jan stares, Helmut notes that untruth is very difficult before the light of Sigmar, and the party is welcomed to the Crusade. I imagine Jan is a little worried about the 'protect him from Chaos' bit. We get a sidebar on Jan's motives but they're nothing about his character; he doesn't have one, he's just a shitty evil cultist who wants to do evil because, uh, evil! Par for the Chaos Course. It instead just says he's worried about the PCs and will try to frame them/implicate them in killing Captain Krieger if they're investigating Chaos. If they're here to kill Karl, he'll just let them try and get fucked up, figuring that'll be way easier.

He gets this information by automatically spying on the PCs with spies who, if they spot them, no-one believes them that they're spies. There is no way to prevent Jan finding out all your motives. After your discussions, the priest Helmut quietly asks the PCs to investigate the possibility of a Chaos Cult among the Crusade. He's worried that people who have been there longer would just finger people closer to Karl than them to get closer to Karl, the heroes killed a goddamn vampire to protect Karl, and they're an unknown quantity that isn't involved in Crusade factionalism yet. The heroes already know there's Nurglite hidden in the Crusade from way back in adventure one, and regardless of enthralled or not, they enthusiastically agree because Fuck Nurgle. Next, Jan walks up to the heroes and goes 'Hey guys, I think the extremely obviously good guy mercenary captain Krieger is the Nurglite you're investigating. You should totally only look at him and not me' in the most suspicious manner possible. In an alternate universe Syphan uses Magical Sense because she's suspicious (c'mon, a Druchii being suspicious is like water being wet or bears being sleepy), realizes he's a Magus, and the party is then locked into a desperate race against time to find proof others will accept beyond the word of a single elf wizard which sounds dangerously close to being a compelling or exciting outcome. But there's no getting off this train.

Asking around about Krieger (the game sort of assumes you ask about Krieger and another more stable military man, Lord Eisenbach, and not about Jan) gets lots of confirmation that he's a good commander who always made sure his soldiers got paid on time. He also goes for walks at night, because he's having trouble reconciling what's happened to his mind and so he has trouble sleeping. It's meant to look more sinister. Eisenbach is similarly lauded as a decent guy; he joined up to try to demand reparations from the Emperor for foraging in his lands during the Storm since he never received the pay for damages but got caught up in Karl's aura. He's a decent guy more interested in farming and building up the towns he owns than fighting, though his soldiers mention he's a competent commander when it comes to it. Nothing sinister about him at all (seriously, he's completely normal).

In the process of gossiping and investigating, our heroes get a surprise interlude: Karl is still 9, and so he's pretty bored with the constant studying and theology lessons Helmut is trying to put him through. He slips away from his lessons to walk alongside the exciting, weird adventurers who saved him from a vampire. Like most nine year old boys, the idea of being an adventurer sounds cool as heck to him, so he has all kinds of questions about what they do. He asks them all about their deeds, whether or not the job is any fun, what the elves were like ("Are they like your elf, or are there like, more sorts of elf!?") if they've ever seen a real dragon, etc. To try to seem cool to the cool adventurers, he also puffs up a little and tells about the time he totally escaped from and/or defeated two Chaos Cultists back in Marienburg. Katarine tells him he was very brave to survive the whole thing, and Sif is amused that a southron cultist can be taken out by a nine year old boy randomly swinging a hammer once, wondering if that's a function of sad southron cults or Better Sigmar having a good arm. They tell him about Chicken Attack (embellished a little to sound more heroic), about fighting the terrible Fen Worm back in the swamps, and about the heroic battle where their elf put a beastman champion to sleep and they formed a kick circle around him (in their version, naturally, Sif beat him in a fair duel). Karl tells them it sounds awesome and that he wishes they didn't have to go to Altdorf, since he says he wants to go to Kislev.

That's a weird swerve, and they ask him why. He tells them he had a vision of needing to defeat a new Chaos Incursion, but an Int-20 tells Syphan he's lying. Syphan asks him why he's so eager to go someplace dismal and cold and what the real reason is, and the boy excuses himself to get back to his lessons. Hmm, there's a certain evil witch who will also be an underdeveloped, underbaked antagonist with no actual character who lives up there. I wonder if this is foreshadowing that won't be followed up on adequately because this adventure is a stitched together nightmare of like 8 authors and Schwalb editing/co-writing everything and the people up above deciding at the last minute to add vampires to try to sell copies of Night's Dark Masters? Probably not.

Still, make note that by taking him seriously and telling him about cool adventures, the PCs now count as having Befriended Karl. This is going to matter down the line. A lot. Assuming they don't murder him (they are not going to murder him).

Over time, the heroes start to realize they're being watched by people with prominent boils on their lips (Per-10 tests to realize this. With 6 people rolling? Extremely likely someone succeeds). Trying to follow one of them with Johan (he is a spy) automatically gets him made, and the enemy spy (a young peasant girl) bites down on the boil and instantly dies an agonizing death, vomiting blood and pus. Well, that's certainly one way to confirm you're Nurglites while trying to deny the heroes any information. Johan is eventually allowed to follow one of them after seeing that cutscene, and it leads to the Crusade's butcher. Who is an evil cook. A nemesis worthy of Johan! Johan watches the evil butcher, realizing the man is planning to spread a terrible plague both among the Crusade and the people of Altdorf with his tainted food. Like all the Chaos villains, his writeup doesn't include any kind of 'why is he doing this'. Johan thinks quickly, and uses his Disguise Kit to affix a fake boil to his lip to mimic a Chaos Cultist. They say any attempt to get Groff to believe you're a cultist has a chance of working, after all. Normally you use Charm, but Johan is a Spy, with Disguise, and they all have a notable physical mark; it seems like a fine substitute. Besides, this is one of the only times Johan actually gets to spy on anyone. Let the poor guy have it. With a Fortune point, he gets a 03 on his Disguise check and is able to convince Groff 'the boss wants a full update on The Plan'.

Groff revealing the plan right now kind of gives some stuff away early, but hey! It's not like knowing will let the PCs change anything. Groff doesn't tell Johan who Jan is, he calls him Tobias (they already knew this is the name of the Nurglite Magus), but he reveals they intend to kidnap Karl, put a magic necklace of dominion on him, make him love some guy named Ruprecht (the Chaos Sorcerer behind Tobias), and then release a plague in Altdorf. Then they'll have Karl 'cure' the plague (Ruprecht will do the curing) to prove his divinity and take over the Empire. Then Nurglites will rule everything and eventually reduce it to slime. Johan thanks Groff for the update, then returns to the protagonists and they go and inform Helmut. This gets Groff burned at the stake (Helmut believes them) and gets them 2 crowns each as a reward. Then Jan tries to have them killed.

That night, as they're ignoring the Krieger subplot because they're pretty sure he's not their man (normally you find a doctored scene designed to implicate him as the cult leader) someone unstoppably slips up to their tent and throws a plague rat in. The rat is covered in fleas that attack the heroes, and you roll a d10 for each of them. On a 7, they roll Toughness or get SUPER NEIGLISH ROT, which runs the entire course of the disease in 30 minutes. Thankfully for our heroes, Sif is the only one bitten, and while she got a 98 first, she Fortuned into a 16 and resisted the disease. If you don't die of the toughness drain, the disease still likely causes several mutations using the Nurgle table in ToC, and if they're 'obvious', the character is unstoppably burned at the pyre the next day and replaced by a new PC. The book mockingly suggests giving them extra Shallya's mercy on making their new PC if you 'feel bad' because feeling bad about an unavoidable save or die horseshit trap is 'bad GMing'. There's nothing you do on this event but hope you don't get unlucky. Meanwhile, the Nurglites do the same to Krieger, regardless of if the PCs played along with implicating him. They find him and his men mutating and screaming, and being cut down by Jan's people. Krieger gets a look at Jan and yells 'You rat!' moments before he gets a knife in the throat.

A sane PC party instantly accuses Jan. No-one believes them. The PCs now know Jan is Tobias, but no-one will believe them about it and they can't find any evidence, even though Helmut dislikes the man. Jan then suggests they put Karl in a coffin and sneak him into Altdorf in secret as a 'shipment of goods'. The heroes assign themselves to guard this shipment, knowing Jan is a Nurglite piece of shit and intending to protect Karl from him since the module won't let them expose him. Jan will then expose himself, using Nurglite magic while kidnapping Karl with no counterplay allowed or possible during the next scene at the gates of Altdorf, while an infinite number of cultists arrive until the PCs are delayed enough not to catch him. This leads us into the Altdorf section, and hoo boy you better get ready for 'We wuz too late, X is already dead!!!' and a hell of a lot of fiat escapes for enemies in the next section!

And the surprise return of Lord Frederick, the character I already hated from Spires! Oh man, it's Frederick senpai! I can't fucking wait!

It goes without saying that negating Fate to kill off a PC with a randomized deathtrap they can't prevent or avoid is the epitome of complete and total horseshit, and Nathan Long should feel bad about himself for it. He should feel bad about himself for this whole chapter. At least Chicken Attack was a mess because of editorial oversight and all. This is just bad, bad writing from start to finish. There are 'worse' parts of this adventure, but the sheer amount of 'nothing you do matters at all, you might as well cut this entire chapter' is very, very strong here and puts it in the running for worst chapter.

Next Time: Why Is Altdorf So BORING

We wuz too late, the Vengeance already saw the Comet!

posted by Night10194 Original SA post

Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 2e: Thousand Thrones

We wuz too late, the Vengeance already saw the Comet!

Welcome to Altdorf. It's going to be a long and extremely shitty stay as the PCs chase after the open Nurglite cultist to rescue a magic child from his clutches. For the sake of not wasting too much of everyone's time, I am going to be heavily, heavily summarizing this part. There's literally nothing I can do to make it at all interesting to read, and God help you if you actually played this part of the game. I thought Chicken Attack was a poor investigative adventure; this is far, far worse.

Tobias (originally Jan) stole the boy well before he actually knew how to get the magic necklace of 'make the boy do whatever my boss says'. Tobias himself and his cultists are immune to the aura of Karl because of a magic ear infection that will eventually render them all completely deaf if not cured. Our heroes actually won't be dealing with Lord Frederick, Hero of Altdorf And Best Guy Ever, because they work for Selena. This is also the last part of the adventure that ever really mentions Selena, and that is mostly to say them sending her word of what's up will take a long time. Johan dispatches one of his Homing Pigeons (they come with being a spy) to report to her that the child is probably actually super holy, some shit has gone down, and they're trying to rescue the boy, please send money. 'Anonymous gifts from their patron may arrive if they're low on supplies', so that's coming.

Similarly, while they're busy investigating, Shanna handles some bookkeeping. She haggles around a little as best she can, both looking for hints about Tobias's location but also buying gear for the team. She ain't wasting a trip to Altdorf and a chance to upgrade equipment. She's an excellent merchant, and good with numbers, and while they're missing out on a pile of money from Frederick they sell off all the enemy Hand Weapons they've been collecting and Johannes' rings (I don't think he ever comes up again, either) at a markup, getting them about 120 more crowns. With that money, she gets to work. With an excellent Haggle roll, she manages to get some good deals on better gear for the team. By the end of her couple hour diversion for needed supplies, they've got mail armor for Oleg (bought at 30% off, so 105 crowns), a breastplate and helmet for Sif (bought at 30% off as well, for 70), and studded armor for Katarine (No success on that, paid 65 crowns to upgrade her Leather). The team's ledgers are still pretty good; they've spent 240 of the 300 or so they had, and got 2 each for killing Groff, so they're at 72 crowns in the bank. Who needs Frederick? That's more than enough for bribes and shit. Oleg and Sif are now even more combat ready, and everyone who might be on the front line except maybe Syphan is better than AV 1 now.

Not that it will matter; there are effectively no combats in this section that change anything and multiple combats that are unwinnable 'infinite enemies spawn until you run'.

Our heroes have a note Tobias dropped that is part one on the linear quest of clues to reach him. Tobias's Mag 2 ass had an easy time in a cutscene, but if he had been in the actual combat engine he would be extremely dead. Nurgle is probably the weakest of the 4 Chaos Lores, and a Mag 2 Nurgle Magus just isn't that scary of an enemy; the team could probably have actually taken him and 10 'basic' cultists of the hand-weapon-wielding Burgher variety at once if it weren't for the cutscene zone. But now they have to hunt for him, questioning lots of side characters who give pre-recorded spiels about how some batman wannabe called the Vengeance of Sigmar is totally gonna track down that Sorcerer and kick his ass. Tobias's note says 'Ansel in Altdorf, ask Estlemann, find necklace for ceremony'. Our heroes know what the necklace is for because they successfully spied on Groff. They know Tobias's overall plan, they know he's reporting to a guy called Ruprecht. Asking around about an 'Ansel' reveals there are a lot of Ansels. Asking around about Estlemann gets some results as soon as they ask someone who can read; guy's known as a shady bookseller who's never actually been caught with his hand in the jar by the Hunters. A Chaos cultist looking around for him's a bad sign, so the heroes get on finding Estlemann's rare books immediately.

They find it on Hoffbann street, a street full of booksellers. It's also on fire. Estlemann himself crawled out of the flames, wounded but alive, and has already been taken to the Shallyan hospital nearby. A mercenary, semi-unlicenced Hunter shows up to demand that the bucket brigades stop trying to put out the fire and let as much of the neighborhood burn as possible. You're intended to eventually kill/oppose this guy during the plot anyway (The Warhammer Cops take a break from Altdorf), and he's right here with a bunch of his mook thugs stabbing innocent civilians while they try to put out a bunch of burning bookshops, so our heroes are going to short-circuit some bullshit. I mean, c'mon, it's a dude having people stabbed and shot for trying to put out a fire that's spreading to residential districts so he can watch a bookstore burn, and you're meant to fight him eventually anyhow. There is no anticipation PCs try to step in or do anything heroic here, even though they're expected to fight these guys later in the adventure.

Golphus Drabben is a shitty Hunter. He's not really affiliated with the church, and he doesn't care about his duties at all; it's merely an excuse to kill people and usually get paid for it. He, personally, is a total badass of a 3rd tier (as you need to be to have the actual Witch Hunter Career) who came at it from being a Bounty Hunter and Vampire Hunter. He exists to annoy the PCs, brutalize people, possibly get taken out by a brick to the head in a comedy scene, and eventually serve as a potential major combat challenge. He also has his Witch Hunter minions, who are all just normal Bounty Hunters. "He does not believe humanity can be saved, or that his work makes the world a better place. He would have been an assassin, but prefers being on the right side of the law. He hunts witches solely because they are in season and it is sanctioned." Our heroes are just going to engage him right now, while he's busy fighting off an angry mob and murdering citizens of Altdorf. I'll be going over what's supposed to happen in encounters with him in the future, but he and his buddies are actually beatable, especially if they have something keeping them busy.

Drabben is a dude in Mail with 3 attacks, 63 BS, 61 WS, a 'Superior' hand weapon that gives him +10 to hit, SB 5, TB 5, and 18 Wounds. He himself is a handful. He's got 6 minions who are 1 attack poorly equipped nerds with crossbows, hand weapons, and no parrying tool or Dodge Blow. They are pretty much fodder against a good PC team. Sif starts the fight by engaging Drabben when she sees him put a crossbow bolt into a fireman who was arguing with him. He gets a trio of bolts into her, only one of them doing anything (1 wound to her chest) because Repeater Crossbows are total shit. Then she's on him. The rest of the team jumps into it when they realize the fighter's started it (and honestly, they wanted to anyway; these assholes are murdering innocent people and risking the whole city block). It's a pretty bloody fight, but between Syphan's ranged AoE debuff from blinding people (and her new Damage 7 Laser Eyes spell to replace her old Damage 3 Magic Missile), Sif getting pretty lucky on her one round of Impact attacks, and the party having recently gotten their two backup fighters into 2 Attack territory, they come out of it bloody but fine. Sif's down to 4 Wounds from fighting Drabben with Syphan lasering him, Johan's at 3, Syphan's at 1 from a pair of crossbow hits, Katarine's lost 6 Wounds from a sword blow, and Oleg and Shanna are miraculously untouched, but the Hunters are all down. There being an angry mob in the process of being driven into a riot gives them cover to grab Drabben's stuff, patch themselves, and move on. Remember, you're actually meant to fight this guy eventually (it's possible to avoid, but difficult), so checking if they can take him is legit. Johan takes the Superior Sword. He needs the help.

Normally, the next scene is going to the hospital to talk to Estlemann, at which point the Hunters come after him to drag him off and torture him to death, shoving any protesting Shallyan out of the way and threatening to kill them. The PCs must promise to kill Estlemann to let him escape being tortured to death to get information out of him. For the narrative, Drabben and his buddies are already dead or running off to lick their wounds, so that bit obviously doesn't happen. It doesn't add anything to the narrative except a chance the PCs get arrested by the Hunters after killing Estlemann or for being near him when the Hunters arrive to drag him off, at which point they get rescued by a mob of civilians threatening the Hunters for burning their homes. Except the civilians came from the wrong direction, and were suspiciously well armed; someone is trying to help the PCs for some reason. It's the Lahmian. Not the one they work for. A different one. She'll be our...not really there hastily inserted Vampiress for this adventure. Estlemann tells the heroes he had a special customer list. Another man came into his offices (Tobias) with some bodyguards, and started burning rare volumes until Estlemann told him about his special customers that he sold evil books to. Then they broke his legs and set his shop on fire to make it look like the Hunters did it. The Hunters showed up to be assholes completely on their own, falling into covering for the Chaos cultists.

The Hunters coming for him is only there because it triggers Estlemann to break down and agree to give the PCs his key to his shop, which will lead to his special customer list. Otherwise, 'even if they torture him' he will tell them nothing more except that he knew an Ansel who was a great customer until he went to Marienburg, went crazy, and came back with a highly distinctive scar. Ansel had also copied Estlemann's special list, after forcing it from him at swordpoint, then fled. Our heroes point out they saved Estlemann's life by dealing with the Hunter assholes a few minutes ago, and Estlemann just gives them the key and passes out from the pain in our version. It changes nothing, after all; normally it's just him begging for a mercy killing and giving you the key if you offer it.

Estlemann's Cache is another little sub-adventure where you sneak into his home to get his list, either fighting Drabben and his Hunters to get in or sneaking past. Again: You're pretty much meant to fight them eventually. This is one of many opportunities normally where you could just kill them, so the heroes fighting them when they did only really changes the Estlemann encounter. The other option normally is taking out the two men watching the place before they can get help, if you can't quite hack sneaking past them. If either gets away to get help, Drabben and the rest of the posse arrive and the fight gets a good bit tougher. PCs naturally normally can get past all this by going to the friend of all Warhammer adventure writers and sneaking through the sewers. Inside, they find no surviving books except a damaged Arabian bestiary (worth 10 crowns) but they do find the names of all of Estlemann's special customers pasted to the shelves holding their orders. If the heroes haven't dealt with him and exit onto the street (instead of going back out through the sewers like smarter heroes), they find Drabben waiting with ten guys for backup, and that's considerably more dangerous than 6. There would have been casualties with 4 more apprentice Hunters. The potential fight there will end with a comedy pratfall brick taking Drabben out if the PCs seem in danger, and his mob falling back to get him to help. The Lahmian's Thrall did, in fact, just brick the Hunter in the head unseen to help the PCs out.

The PCs investigate the names, and find seven of the 24 people have been killed by Sigmarite Batman. It's pretty easy to make the connection to Ansel demanding the names and Sigmarite Batman killing people from that list. Other victims of Sigmarite Batman seem to be mutants trying to live normal lives, hedge wizards, etc. Somehow the man can just sense mutation, and he kills anyone who is a mutant that he can find, leaving distinctive twin-tailed comet badges made out of tin nailed to his victim's heads. The heroes aren't idiots, and so get looking for who makes the badges (this and looking for the maker of his fancy black mask are the two paths to him). Investigating the mask is the path Tobias took, and leads to another tortured victim (the mask maker) that they find dying in agony that the PCs can only mercy kill for information. Investigating the badges leads right to a 'brother Axel', a lay brother with the Sigmarites, and is a more direct and easy path to the Vengeance. This is twice that scenarios lead to someone begging the PCs for euthanasia for info with no other options.

Finding Brother Axel's address is as easy as talking to the Sigmarite lay brothers' record keeper. If they somehow piss him off they can steal it from him. Our heroes are not idiots and so easily talk their way through the bureaucrat and head off to find Axel. Axel is obviously already dying a torturous death, because Tobias found him first. He had a weird mutation that let him 'smell' magic and mutation through gills under his arms. Axel is Ansel, and he obviously told Tobias everything under torture while getting brutalized, so Tobias is off to get the necklace. The necklace is a magic item Ansel got by working for Ruprecht so he could rape a girl he loved who didn't care for him. There's really no other way to phrase 'I'm going to kill some people, slip this on her neck, and use magic to force her to love me'. He had spent his entire life trying to learn magic to magically force this girl to love him. When he used the necklace, she hated him so much that she swelled up and exploded, and the mutated pus from it mutated him, too. Awesome. Fun times. He decided he'd make up for all this by using his ability to sense mutants and magic to murder mutants and hedge mages so Sigmar would take his mutation away. Didn't go well for him. Good riddance to a piece of shit.

The bit of his journal saying all that takes a little more rigamarole to find about finding the right book in another shop, then the Lahmians steal the journal from the players. Sofia the Lahmian Thief will be showing up in adventure 5, and her mistress, Baroness Theodora Margrave (I thought Margrave was a title for HRE princes) won't really do much but will show up all fucked up in the Hellwomb later because dangit we gotta get one vampire of each flavor there. Lots of fiat shit happens to ensure the players arrive at Theodora's black coach chasing Sofia, and she either pays them for the journal and leaves, or sends infinite bodyguards at them until they run. If they haven't killed Drabber, he shows up again to fight them unless they make a Charm-20. If they kill him, eh. If he wins, none of them die and they get released from prison the next day; this is entirely to stop them trying to follow Theodora. After that, it's off to the Drakwald and the areas around Wulfenburg in Osterland to try to get the necklace before Tobias and rescue Karl. Tobias has long since left the city and will get the necklace before them, too, then they'll face him eventually in Chapter 5.

So nothing actually happens, they just have a long runaround, the Lahmians don't really do anything (though Sofia will be back next Chapter with a huge unit of extremely dangerous and well-trained soldiers the PCs are expected to fight) and basically nothing was accomplished. There are worse chapters; next chapter has the first instance of genuinely mandatory child murder for instance. But Chapter 4 is the single most boring chapter. Absolutely nothing is accomplished. Nothing moves. Any decision or action PCs take is negated immediately. It's basically all a glorified cutscene, with the chance of dying to a spot of bad luck early and then nothing of interest for the rest of the chapter. Your villain is always mandated to be ahead of you no matter what you do (despite being incredibly obvious and suspicious), your investigation again has to follow a narrow trail of pre-scripted events, and none of it even matters. Next up comes bullshit random encounters and our first splatterhouse 'dungeon'! I'm excited. Are you excited?

Next Time: The Drakwald's Knight Infestation

Chapter Content Warning

posted by Night10194 Original SA post

Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 2e: Thousand Thrones

Chapter Content Warning

Chapter 5 is not going to be a nice time for anyone. I should note I probably came off as too flippant in my last update about Ansel being a sexual predator. It's just that's his entire story and it makes me angry. A guy who desperately spent years trying to find a way to become a wizard so he could force a woman who didn't care for him to love him? Who physically broke into her house to kidnap her and then try to clip a magic relic to her to force her to be 'undyingly loyal' as if he were her father (which naturally killed her in agony)? So yeah. The whole Necklace of Undying Loyalty starts out with sexual menace, the thing I would prefer writers just leave the hell out of RPGs because I've never seen one handle it well. There are lots of ways to introduce the loyalty amulet without starting at sexual menace o'clock. Sexual menace is absolutely one of the biggest warning flags of terrible 'dark fantasy'.

This chapter also features one mandated child murder and one strongly suggested one, so have fun with that, too. The authors would probably defend this by saying it's 'meant to be dark'. I can write dark stories without the protagonists being forced to murder children and without touching on sexual menace, thanks.

So you know what, let's start with some fun stuff first before we get into all the slime and suicide and euthanasia. Our heroes have picked up another 300 EXP, so Sif has maxed out her WS and picked up Longbow use (and a longbow) so they actually have a ranged option if need be. Veteran is a good track for becoming good at both melee and ranged. Katarine picked up a Fel advance, Heal+10 (66% Heal check with Surgery, she's a good doctor), and Outdoor Survival because she can't call herself a Rhyan without it. Oleg grabbed Shadowing, Scale Sheer Surface, and Strike to Injure and is like 1 advance off finishing Shieldbreaker. Johan picked up +10 WS and +5 Agi; he's quick and actually decent enough with a sword now. Shanna got an Attack (not that she ever wants to be in melee), +5 WS, and Gamble+10. With all the gambling minigames prior, surely there will be more (it never happens again). Syphan jumped the rails and went into Seer for 200 (she had 100 saved), and then bought Keen Senses and Luck because holy shit, Seer gives you those? +20% to all Per tests and +1 Fortune a day? Fuck yeah, elf wizard needs those. Syphan is basically a long-form mechanical joke about Witchcraft and alternate wizarding, and damn is she going to pay off.

Especially because it's time for her to pick up something she's entitled to according to Realm of Sorcery: She's got Mag 2 and Lore of Light, she can get a Familiar! While Shanna is buying supplies for their chase through the Drakwald forest towards Ostland, Shanna accidentally gets a merchant to throw in a rare pet he's been unable to sell as a free bonus. A strange bear-like creature, with dextrous hands and a bandit mask, that he calls the Wash-Bear since she washes everything he gives her before eating it. He even throws in a bottle of 'elven tree-blood' for a crown, some kind of exotic syrup from the same land as the washbear. Syphan immediately recognizes what Shanna has bought, demanding immediate possession of the bottle of syrup and the 'raccoon', whatever one of those is. She takes the washbear off to perform some kind of elaborate magical ritual, which appears to be a dance party where she dances around with the creature and feeds her treats occasionally. By the end of it, the party has an adorable washbear with a little wizard's hat who can talk. Rose the Raccoon will be Syphan's familiar, using the Weasel/Ferret stats (it's what she rolled, I thought a raccoon would be funnier). She rolls for Rose's first Familiar Power and gets GM's choice, and I'm here to show off how nuts Familiars are so she gets Magic Power, which straight gives +1 Mag while your Familiar lives. That's right, as long as Rose is alive, Syphan is Mag 3. As if she was a whole tier of wizard higher. Rose will gain 50 EXP for every 100 Syphan does, and for 300 more can buy more abilities, or can become the smartest, buffest raccoon in the universe as time goes. Rose likes math, organization and cleaning things. She will get along well with Shanna. Rose the Raccoon will wash everything you love, as Syphan discovers when she catches her new Familiar washing her spell components.

Familiars are fun as hell but basically broken in how useful they are. Other wizards can fuck with you with your Familiar, and Witch Hunters might not like them, but who doesn't want a cute, leveling-up magic companion animal that gives you bonuses? Other notable familiars include Mssr. Fluffles the Existentialism Cat and Mielo the furiously helpful idiot osprey. Always get a Familiar as a wizard. It's one of the fun parts of playing one.

So yeah, that anecdote is in there because otherwise this whole series of updates is just going to be misery and slime. Plus, Rose is a significant mechanical upgrade and part of how Syphan will get away with the stupid shit she's pulling advancement wise. Tiny magical raccoon done, the team descends into the Drakwald forest for a month's journey to Ansel's old village. This is potentially going to take multiple sessions for a normal group, because you check for a random encounter every day (and can take a long time if you don't hire the specific guide the book wants you to use, or he dies, or you don't make proper skill checks). 5% chance per day, +5% for however many days it's been without an encounter. 30% chance of a second encounter on days when you have one. Most of the encounters are pretty trivial; a lone troll, a small band of gobbos, some bandits equal in number to the heroes, a tree full of naked corpses, etc etc. The really dangerous one is running into a detachment of Knights Panther who assume you're cultists. Roll Charm at -10 (+20 if you have the Guide) to talk them out of a fight. If you fail, they either arrest you and delay you for 2 weeks (which depending on your GM, may fail the scenario since you're in a time sensitive chase to rescue Karl before he, himself, is mind-whammied) or you have to fight 12 Knights Panther. That is a guaranteed party wipe. The book talks about how they retreat if you kill 5, then spread rumors that you're a Chaos Warband to cause you further trouble but no, no party of 3-6 1800 EXP characters are going to beat these assholes.

This is being outnumbered either 4-1 or 2-1 by guys who have WS 62 (1 point less than Sif), SB 4, TB 4, 2 attacks, Plate Armor, Warhorses (who will also attack), Lances, Shields, and Hand Weapons. They're highly trained, fast on their mounts, experiences, and enormously outnumber the party. If a fight starts with these guys, you will just die. They would potentially wipe a Tier 3 team. There is a weird tendency in all of WHFRP to seriously undervalue 'human' enemies. 'They're just people' and all. Human enemies will fuck you up because just one of those guys is a match for the extremely great-for-her-level party fighter. If you reworked this encounter to be like, one badass knight and his men at arms running around and not being too picky about who they kill, rob, and pass off as Chaos marauders? Good. But making every one of the 12 man party an excellent knight with more EXP than the party is uh...I guess if you fail the Charm test you just get arrested and hope your GM decrees the 2 week delay doesn't matter, at which point what's the point of the encounter anyway? Just like with Ashes, these 'ordinary human' knights are absolute shitkickers while the average Chaos Demon would be a chump next to them.

10% chance you run into that encounter on every encounter roll, BTW.

Our heroes go through a bunch of minor BS encounters that don't threaten them, than talk their way out of the Knight encounter because they learned you hire a guide whenever the book says you do. This would probably take hours of play and grinding, boring, samey encounters with minor enemies for most groups, so be glad you can skip it in a sentence. They arrive at the town of Kietchdorf and find it's suffering plague problems, a sure sign their enemies are nearby. You aren't intended to do anything in Kietchdorf, just rest up and head on over to Ruhrhoff, Ansel's home village. You'll accidentally solve the plague problem during the main adventure so there's no reason to investigate it, and no-one here knows much. One person tells you their son is missing and gives his description; you'll meet him in the dungeon later. The blacksmith lost his family to Beastmen, and you find their corpses on the way into town. If you try to give the guy some closure by telling him what happened, he kills himself. Nice. Thanks, game. That's about it for Kietchdorf, nothing really happens there. The team debates looking for the Nurgle cultists there, but reasons they'll have to handle it on their way back if at all; time is of the essence, and if it's their enemies they might catch and destroy them on the way anyway.

Next, they arrive in Ruhrhoff, after what was probably a long series of boring sessions if you play it by the book. Finally, the splatterhouse dungeon towns can begin!

The Drakwald section is as dull as Chapter 4, the only thing that stands out is how bonkers the Knights are. Next come the 'fun' parts of Chapter 5. I would like to note Chapter 5 is covered in 'By the way, this is the adventure you'll want to insert into other campaigns! It can easily be adapted to remove Thousand Thrones, it's great!' style sidebars. It is not.

Next Time: Resident Evil, but Shitty

Evil Mansions

posted by Night10194 Original SA post

Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 2e: Thousand Thrones

Evil Mansions

So our heroes get to Ansel's old house in Ruhrhoff. Ruhrhoff is not in good condition. Like a lot of Ostland, it got smashed by the Chaos army that was sweeping through to lose at Middenheim. Somehow, Ansel's old home is still standing, and when the heroes go in there's some pointless searching they can do upstairs that mostly includes a '15% chance for every PC to fall through the floor for d10+1 damage' and nothing else. Going into the spooky basement finds the remnants where Ermaline (Ansel's victim) exploded, and a bloody outline of the Necklace. A successful Per test showed the heroes multiple people (not just Tobias) came in here already, so they can assume the cult has the Necklace. Awesome. The bloody mess is supposedly so bad that the adventurers all need a WP test or they run away from the basement (and into a cultist ambush, if they didn't set guards to cover them while they searched the house). I hate this kind of event; it smacks of being unable to actually write tension or horror, so they just toss in a 'roll against being SO SCARED you run away!' check. This whole adventure will be trying really hard to be a spooky, atmospheric horror adventure, and it just doesn't work. As the heroes find they're too late AGAIN (no matter how quickly they made it here) they get jumped by Eternal Malady Cultists. These will be our designated mooks for the adventure, and they're fine. WS 45, BS 35, SB 2, TB 3, have some light armor, a sword and shield, and a bow. They're all also meant to roll individually or choose specific mutations, with lots of detail lavished on how their bodies are changed, or how they explode in pus, bile, and filth when killed (has no game effect, just coats the PC who killed them in it), etc.

I know I like to track lots of individual cosmetic changes and things that don't really effect their combat statline too much for my disposable mooks. Oh, also, they can randomly have Neiglish Rot, too, which is effectively a save or die since our heroes don't have a 3rd tier Shallyan. They only have to make a Touch Attack (Parry and Dodge are at -20%) to slime you and cause a Tough or get the disease which will almost certainly kill you and absolutely certainly horribly mutate you (it lasts for 4 weeks, is Tough or lose 5% to all stats every day dying at 0 Tough, and it causes an automatic mutation every week). Do not give random disposable mooks save or die moves. If you have to give them diseases (they're Nurglites), give them survivable ones! Every fucking time with Schwalb, it's fucking Neiglish Rot. There are other diseases, goddamnit!

Anyway, as the GM for our heroes' story is not an idiot, none of the disposable mooks have the 'rarest and most powerful disease in the world' (which doesn't seem very rare since fucking everything seems to have it) they have a pretty easy time with equal numbers of shitty cultists. The book says to throw as many cultists at players during this adventure as you like, and to do it 'whenever they go someplace you don't want them to' or do things you don't like. It reminds me of fucking Forges and 'if the PCs are making progress, have them randomly attacked to inflict damage and slow them down because they're getting ahead of the adventure and need to get back on the railroad'. It's one thing to have ready-made mooks waiting in the wings, it's the 'if they don't play exactly how you wanted, more random combat, maybe with a save or die guy tossed in' that pisses me off.

The heroes realize they're too late and head on to the Villa Hahn, near Wolfenburg, tracking their enemies and trying to catch up to Tobias before he can enslave Karl. The Villa Hahn is the original family home of Ruprecht Hahn, the Chaos Sorcerer at the heart of a lot of this mess. He's honestly more of a villain than the Black Witch, given he actually has a character (even if the players don't really interact with him outside his minions until they fight him as a sub boss in the final dungeon). His dad was a shitty petty criminal and Stevedore who showed such chutzpah in asking for his soon-to-be-wife's hand in marriage that her powerful crime boss/merchant dad agreed instead of having him whacked. Lucius and Irmella were wed, Lucius made a killing on illegal goods and got a phony title of nobility and a big family villa, and he had two kids. Erich and Ruprecht. Erich was the good son who did everything crime dad wanted, Ruprecht was highly intelligent, diffident, and grew bored quickly with his father's business lessons. He had a talent for magic, a prodigious one, but Lucius feared sending his son to Altdorf when his son hated him. He was afraid Ruprecht would try to ruin his business out of spite. Instead, Ruprecht studied on his own, fell into dark magic, and became so powerful that Nurgle himself came by and was like 'hey kid, you wanna turn into a giant bloated shitslug and vomit on everything?' and Ruprecht was like 'MAN DO I' and that's it for his character. In the hands of writers that didn't like shit as much, Ruprecht's backstory would have been perfect for a Tzeentch wizard, but they love shit, so here we are with Nurgle.

But 'I wanted to learn magic, I was told to just 'stop being a mage', and so I fell in with a bad wizard crowd' is at least a backstory. Ruprecht at least made some choices that led him to where he is. That's the beginnings of a proper villain, shame there isn't anything more. Anyway, on the way to the villa they encounter a broken bridge and have to either take a day to go around (which could be disastrous depending on the GM) or they have to (you guessed it) wade through filth and test for diseases (Green Pox, which is potentially fatal but not nearly as bad as Neiglish Rot). Our heroes instead chop down a nearby tree and toss it across the thin, shallow river, and carefully balance beam across it, because they ain't playing along and they are here to solve problems. This would be a good time for a cultist attack by the book's reasoning! There is no cultist attack.

The Villa is meant to introduce Ruprecht and show the characters who keeps trying to kidnap Karl. This is fine, in the hands of a good writer; a villain's old family home introducing his character as the heroes pick their way through the corrupted, dark manor house could be a cool adventure. Old writings, the nature of the corruption, the place itself, all of these can tell you a lot. But there isn't much to Ruprecht, so the house is mostly a haunted house with some gotcha traps, a lot of shit, and our mandatory child murder. And stuff like 'if a PC touches the water in the reflecting pool near the entrance, they get impregnated with a Nurgling and give birth to a shit-monster at the most socially inappropriate time' (which causes up to 3 Insanity). Our heroes are not idiots, and know that when you're in Chaos Town, you better engage with as little as possible, burn any unusual books, and just kill anything that looks odd. There's really no incentive to do anything else, so they won't be triggering a lot of these 'if you touch or investigate anything, gotcha' traps. They also find Tobia's horse and the coffin he kidnapped Karl with, empty. So Karl and Tobias are here, somewhere. The mansion itself is a big, decaying manor house covered in 'ochre oil' where everything is rotting, about what you expect for Nurgle. All the decorations and once-fine suits of armor and things inside are decayed and 'smeared with excrement'. Searching around the library and study, Shanna finally gets to pick a lock, which discovers a ledger showing the insanely illegal stuff Lucius Hahn made his living on and a note from a clerk saying Ruprecht was getting into the 'extra delicate' stuff (probably warpstone and evil books). Most of the house is fairly empty and mostly just more 'and also everything is covered in slime and maybe shit'.

The reason this is bad is again, this is our chance to learn about Ruprecht. The house needs to have character to get across his character, the character of his father and his mother and his brother, etc etc. It doesn't. It's just more shit. All searching around does is uncover some threadbare clues like that ledger, or a Sigil of Flies, a magic amulet that will get the PCs into the hedge maze in the back and towards the end of the adventure. The next actual thing of interest is the kitchen, where the heroes find old bloodstains and a cleaver from where Lucius Hahn went insane and killed and ate his wife. She died so horribly that her ghost is still around, though all it can do is spook the PCs. It'll vanish when they kill Lucius, which will be soon. Lucius went insane because his son implanted a giant cockroach in his body that wears him like a meat suit and uses him to kill and eat people while feeding on him and keeping his increasingly gaunt body alive. The heroes run into this in the wine cellar, where Lucius actually tries to warn them to run, at great pain to himself from the insect punishing him for it. He tells them it's all his fault, that he failed his son, in between telling them to come closer because he can't quite resist the insect. He tells them the entire above backstory of Ruprecht Hahn. So...like, the mansion doesn't slowly tell you by environmental storytelling or something. His dad is still alive (if in hideous pain) and just tells you the contents of the backstory sidebar. Excellent storytelling!

He then begs to die, and getting a look at him, uh, they really don't have another choice. He's treated like a boss fight with extra tactics like 'hitting him from behind can target the insect directly', except he has 5 wounds, the Insect has 7, and they're both pretty weak. As soon as the fight starts, Syphan hits him with her LASER EYES and just vaporizes man and bug in one Damage 7 wallop, mercifully killing them instantly. They decide this Ruprecht guy is gonna need some of the same when they catch up to him. Laser eyes are the cure for Nurglite bullshit. Upstairs, they find a crying thirteen year old girl, a giant mass of tentacles and flesh made out of two merged people, a mutilated woman's corpse, and a man holding a sword. The guy holding the sword is a random treasure hunter, 'lured' here by the little girl, who is actually trying to feed him to the Chaos Spawn, who is her parents. This is the fate of Erich Hahn, who leaves a backstory log full of 'MAN I LOVE MY WIFE AND MY DAUGHTER, SURE DO HOPE I DON'T GET FUSED INTO A CHAOS SPAWN WITH HER WHILE MY DAUGHTER BECOMES AN INSANE PLAGUE-BEARING ETERNAL CHILD' (not exactly, but about as unsubtle). The Spawn has poor stats, but it's still dangerous, can you guess why? You were right! It has fucking NEIGLISH ROT, the fucking disease these authors should have taken away from them while they get whapped on the nose with a rolled up newspaper like a naughty puppy. It also causes a Tough-10 or become Paralyzed and Helpless for *2d10 minutes* any time it makes a successful WS test (so even if it's parried or dodged) but it 'only' has WS 30. Does have 4 attacks, though. But it's also afraid of fire and they forgot to give it Fear itself, so when Johan lifts up the lantern it panics and freezes. The team then cuts it down. Still, it's basically a pile of 'save or die' moves. Unlikely to hit individually, but at 4 swings a turn, WS 30 is gonna 'succeed' on someone and then that Paralysis test makes them helpless which makes the next WS test succeed automatically and do +d10 damage and the fucking thing still causes Neiglish Rot saves if it gets any wounds in.

Save or dies aren't horror. Save or dies are just bad design.

Anyway, dispatching the beast, they go to save the girl, obviously. Which is obviously a trap. She's evil, and screams 'YOU KILLED MY PARENTS' and bites Katarine for trying to help her. Can you guess what the bite automatically causes a save against? Do you have a basic sense of pattern recognition? If you try to help the girl in any way this happens, and it's fucking Neiglish Rot a fucking gain! Katarine makes her Save on the retest with Fortune and they naturally have to kill the child. But don't worry, she's not really a child! She's just eternally stuck as a 13 year old insane girl who feeds people to her fused parents! I'm still counting it for mandatory child murder on the principle that if you pull 'they look like a child eternally' that's what you're going for. The treasure hunter takes one look at this and books it. The heroes move on. Next up is a prayer room full of a shrine to Handrich covered in shit and smiley faces drawn in shit. Lots of shit in here. Nothing else. They also find Ruprecht's journal where he talks about happily imprisoning his family and torturing them all and forcing them to mutate. He also mentions how excited he is for the Storm of Chaos, but then has another entry immediately after going "OH FUCK WE LOST I GOTTA BOOK IT FOR THE WASTES". Never bet on Archy, buddy. He also has another journal confirming he learned his magic from the evil shit his dad smuggled. Good job, Lucius. If you'd just sent your kid to school instead of smacking him around, and hadn't been dealing in exactly the stuff that would teach him black magic, things might not have ended with everyone covered in shit. At least it's some character for Ruprecht. Falling because you hate your hypocritical father is something.

With that, they finish the actual mansion and head out back. What awaits them there? Is it more shit? It's more shit.

Next Time: Dare You Enter Nurgle's Magical Realm?

Waylaid By Bullshit

posted by Night10194 Original SA post

Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 2e: Thousand Thrones

Waylaid By Bullshit

The entire back yard is full of traps that I don't understand why they think you'd spring. For instance, the Rookery is full of caged up birbs. If you pick the lock or otherwise unleash the obviously evil, glaring, partly mutated birbs, they attack you, doing d10+2 armor-ignoring damage for d5 rounds. The birbs are even perched on a dead peasant! Who is pecked to death! And you have to pick the lock! Who the fuck did they think would be stupid enough to open the cages? The birbs then fly off and 'show up again if the adventurers aren't having a hard enough time'. Poking the body makes it explode and cover a PC in filth, causing Insanity. Sure is a lot of stuff in this adventure designed to spray you with filth. The pond is full of a dozen little shit-demons, but Nurglings aren't that dangerous and you have no reason to approach the pond. Like everything in this dungeon, trying to explore or be curious in any way just leads to more dumb traps and monsters, so just keep swinging and don't engage with anything. There's also a gazebo. Do not approach the gazebo. There's nothing of value. As our heroes get close, they hear angry buzzing and back the fuck off. They're wise to do this, as the gazebo will disgorge mutagenic hornets who do Damage 1 Armor Ignoring per round and debuff you from horrible hornet stings, and also cause Mutation tests 24 hours later based on how often they damaged you and how many Toughness tests you failed. If you somehow fight them off (hitting the swarm with a torch or something for 5 wounds will burn them to death, other weapons don't work) the gazebo just spawns infinite hornets until you're dead or you get the hint that it's empty. The Garden is full of fruit that somehow makes you make a WP test not to touch the obvious trap fruit and does Damage 2 Armor Ignoring and paralyzes your arm for an hour if you fail the test and touch it. The Greenhouse has plants that spray you with disease and one of those key sigils.

Your best bet is to ignore literally everything out here and head for the hedge maze. Ruprecht's journal told our heroes it's where he hid his evil hell temple, and they have yet to find and stab the shit out of Tobias so they assume he's there. They're really pissed off at this guy by this point. Rose remarks and Johan confirms that no amount of washing is going to help this place; they make plans to burn the whole goddamn house down once they're done here. Because the heroes have been so thoroughly shown they shouldn't fucking touch anything, they didn't take one of the magic 'get through the hedge maze free' amulets. It's a sigil of goddamn Nurgle, of course they think it would disease them since everything else in the damn house is a booby trap. Thankfully you don't need one. They have Syphan and she finally gets to use Magical Sense. You know how your Ranger almost certainly has talents and skills for Navigation? The Hedge Maze will let you use the skill, but specifically negates any bonus talents (and makes you roll at -30). You also have to succeed *4* tests in a row. Using Follow Trail is also at -30, and needs 3 successes in a row. Any attempt to hack through the maze or anything makes evil plants shoot blinding nectar into your face. Any failed test causes encounters with cultists, or various plants that kill you if you touch them, or lets you find a dead Witch Hunter. If you were using the 'PCs work for a Hunter' hook at the beginning, it's their employer. This is the last time any beginning hooks are ever mentioned; our heroes will never see Selena again and she will never both betraying them or anything. Only the Hunter hook really gets any kind of closure in a random encounter here. He doesn't have any gear or anything, obviously. No treasure in any dungeons.

Syphan's Magical Sense is the best way through, and even then she has to make 2 -20 tests. Thankfully for her, she's Aethyrically Attuned and lucky as hell. It costs her both her Fortune points (which might matter a lot) but the elf easily leads them through the maze without any random encounters. The others are pretty impressed. Or would be, if Syphan didn't have an exact spell that would easily defeat this situation just the authors didn't think of it. She's a Light Mage. It's possible you have a Light Mage by this point. Light has a specific spell that lets her see through all illusions, and the Hedge Maze's confusing nature is specifically an illusion the Sigil dispels. So instead of all that, Syphan takes some time to Channel, smashes a glass bead, Rose does a magical raccoon backup dance to give her more magic, and she casts Eyes of Truth, immediately showing the team the way through rather than wasting time. Thanks, Light!

The heroes find the center easily and surprise another group of shitty random encounter cultists climbing out of a fleshy sphincter leading to the Temple. They kill the cultists pretty easily. And they get to the part that makes me suspect Magical Realm. The cultists know the 'special way' to rub the sphincter to enter. The PCs don't, and can't learn it. The scene of the PCs having to hack through it, as it wurbles and sprays them with filth and blood, has fucking STAGE DIRECTIONS. 'Make the PCs really WORK at cutting it. They should be covered in pus and blood and disgusting goo by the time they get through'. Everyone also has to check vs. Disease or get the Brown Pox, which will explode and leak shit everywhere at inappropriate moments and possibly permanently lowers Fel for scarring. Our heroes don't do this, because they've still got the all-seeing magical eyes of their elf, and just poke the giant magic butt in whatever way the cultists do to get inside rather than having a long 'they have to cut through, getting all filthy and gross and covered in shit' scene. The 'there's no other way, they have to do it, make them really get in there and get covered and coated' stage direction shit is really, really whizzard-esque.

Look, I don't make this statement lightly. But this is really suggesting someone really, really enjoys writing the PCs getting forced to get covered in shit. It's happened repeatedly before now and then it also has a 'and now they HAVE to, if they avoided it, no other way to progress! GET IN THERE!' complete with stage directions for the GM. Combined with the shit-sore disease it inflicts to humiliate them. It just feels like someone's Magical Realm.

Anyway, the temple itself is surprisingly short. The kitchens cause Neiglish Rot if you touch anything, most things are diseased if you try to touch them, there's an evil book full of dozens of diseases but each page also causes the disease it describes (the heroes burn it), the heroes can't read anything in here because it's all in Demonic, and finally they find a crazed man held as a future sacrifice who attacks you or alerts the cultists if you try to help and the only safe way past is to kill him. Finally, FINALLY, our heroes reach the actual center of the cult where Johann the Plague Priest, Tobias, and 9 Malady Cultists are waiting, trying to enslave Karl. Johan the Spy is not pleased the villain is named Johann. The encounter here can be very easy at first, because if you killed or managed to sneak by the prisoner, the cultists are Surprised.

Our heroes managed to silence the prisoner without just murdering the guy (Shanna stuck a gag in his mouth or something) and we'll see how this goes with Surprise. There's other stuff that will come up, naturally, but they start off with a ranged volley from surprise at Tobias, trying to kill the priest who's holding Karl and who's led them through all this shit. A crossbow bolt, an arrow, laser eyes, and a sling stone interrupt his chanting. Shanna Furies him in the groin with a rock. He drops immediately before the fight even starts. Surprise is fucking brutal; +30% to hit, enemy can't act round 1? Tobias is dead before the fight starts. Even if he wasn't, Tobias just isn't very dangerous. Mag 2 can't do very much with Lore of Nurgle.

The problem in the fight isn't Tobias, or Johann. Johann is Mag 1. He can't even use 'real' magic and Petty Chaos magic sucks. The Malady Cultists have lovingly detailed mutations and names, but they're just 9 of the same shitty, easily murdered cultists you've been fighting. None even have Neglish Rot. No, the problem is Sofia. Remember her? She shows up with 12 highly trained, well equipped soldiers. A highly evasive, skilled vampiress duelist and thief who causes Fear (and who has Unsettling, so you're debuffed on WS and BS until you get WP vs. that separate from her Fear) is bad enough. She's backed up by 12 of her blood pets, who are all wearing partial mail armor, WS 45, 2 Attacks, and have stuff like Dodge and SB 4. She's here to kidnap Karl herself, having followed just behind the PCs with an entire unit of troops with no way for the PCs to ever detect her. The fight is meant to be run 'narratively', with the Cultists and Lahmians killing one another as the PCs dive into the fight at points, or 'you can decide one side wipes the other out and have the PCs fight one', and 'you decide how much trouble the PCs have, though if they're foolish they will probably die'. Gee, that sounds more like it's the GM deciding if they die or not, because if the GM decides Sofia and company kill the cult and turn on the PCs, they're now fighting 12 pretty skilled mooks and a fucking vampiress. The cult was easy. The Lahmian team is fucking mean. Also note most of the female cultists are described as 'once beautiful' or 'pretty if she had a face'.

If the heroes kill Tobias, a terrible tumor on his body explodes into its own creature, spraying shit everywhere and running away. It'll show up later. Since they killed him round 1, that event triggers and the Lahmians attack right then; they always start attacking the heroes the moment they kill Tobias to distract them and make sure they don't kill the Chaos Organ. The Lahmians will also step in if the PCs attack Karl or try to kill him in the confusion, preventing it. Our heroes are not here for that, but there's a lot of 'how to keep the PCs from killing Karl' here, naturally. Playing it out for curiosity's sake, yes, the party will lose to the 12 soldiers and Sofia. And remember, Oleg is basically a second warrior, Sif is well equipped and strong, Syphan has good combat magic, Johan is competent enough to contribute, and they have a combat medic. Only Shanna isn't particularly useful in a fight (and she can still get lucky with a sling, ask Tobias). But Sofia can shut down Sif (She has an 84% Dodge Blow and a 71% Parry, Sif only has 2 attacks!) and is more than a match for her alone, while the highly skilled multi-attack mooks swarm everyone else and start cutting down the lighter-armored characters like Syphan and using the fact that they outnumber the party to gain bonuses to hit. But hey, the fight is supposed to be 'narrative'. Sofia attacks the heroes with four of her minions to try to get Karl away while telling her men to handle the cultists, giving the heroes time to fight her. They wound Sofia (at significant cost in Wounds to themselves; Oleg comes out of it at 2, Sif at 0 but no crits) and take out her men, then turn their attention to the wider fight, finding it mostly wrapping up as they shoot down a fleeing Johann the Plague Priest. Johan points down at the alternate, evil Johann for a moment, says something about 'cleaning up his name', then stabs him in the throat. Sofia flees, cursing them, to never again recur or be an adversary.

They grab Karl, who runs over to Katarine, and they run like hell to get him out of this awful hellhole. Happily, they've also killed the cult that was poisoning Keitchdorf, so that doomed town will be fine. They also recover the Necklace, and the book suggests they'll need a whole sidequest to destroy it, having to seek out and find...an...elf...wizard-

Syphan just holds it up and lasers the shit out of it. Elf Wizard! Problem Solved!

Where do I even begin? Aside from the lack of any compelling environmental storytelling or atmosphere, the vague sense of Magical Realm, the constant dumb traps that you'll only spring if you haven't learned not to actually engage with or explore anything on Chaos adventures, etc, the final battle has balancing entirely up to the GM with no guidance and treats '9 shitty mook cultists with meh stats and two pathetic excuses for wizards' as just as dangerous as 'crack team of 12 badass soldiers and their Vampire leader'. Also note there's absolutely no treasure, no rewards, nothing. Just crawling through piles of shit. Our heroes rescued Karl, both because just going along with it is the easiest way to run the campaign and because they're not into child murder. What if you shank him while you have the chance? Either the campaign ends here or he turns out to have been a perfect body double the entire time. That's right, it can turn out Karl was never kidnapped at all, and you did literally all of this for nothing. This can also happen if something else killed him in the fight, or the enemy got away with him and the GM doesn't feel like playing out chasing him. Even if it really WAS Karl, if the PCs killed him the next adventure suggests just altering adventures to remove Karl and forcing the PCs through the rest of the campaign.

"The PCs surely have cause to kill Karl" is such a casual phrase, but fuck. Our heroes ain't down for child murder, so they take the poor kid to get a bath and ask him if he really wants to go back to the Crusade. He says he wants to get to Kislev and won't explain why, but taking him there will intersect with the Crusade no matter what and there's no option for our heroes to talk him out of it or not go along with it, so there ain't no getting off this train. They take the poor kid and make their way to Wolfenburg in Ostland, where they run into the Crusade again by sheer happenstance. The Ride Never Ends. They also burn the evil mansion to the ground on the way out. Good riddance. If only it had had a proper self destruct system.

Chapter 5 is the worst part of the entire campaign. Do not expose Chapter 5 directly to your face. There's nothing here to be salvaged and this chapter alone should convince people not to play Thousand Thrones.

Next Time: Ride Continues Not Ending

Relatively Inoffensive

posted by Night10194 Original SA post

Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 2e: Thousand Thrones

Relatively Inoffensive

Chapter 6 takes place near Wolfenburg, the capitol of Ostland. Remembering from Sigmar's Heirs, Wolfenburg did not have a good time in the Storm. It was right in the path of Archy's march to Middenheim, and while it had its own walls and troops, Ostland is one of the least densely populated and poorest parts of the Empire. While all of Ostland put up a surprisingly good fight that delayed Archy's armies and forced them to bypass multiple fortresses, Wolfenburg itself was not so fortunate and was completely razed. It didn't get the Praag treatment; Archy didn't have time, nor was he the same kind of methodical commander as Kul anyway, but Wolfenburg is by all accounts a corpse city that the Ostland Count can't yet afford to rebuild. I'm not really sure why the Crusade came here, except that it's on the way to Kislev and Karl keeps saying he wants to go there, so maybe they figured they could catch him if he escaped? It also makes no sense to be here if Karl was a double as per this chapter's introduction and its means to continue the campaign if the PCs lost or killed Karl; if they still had Karl back in Altdorf, they could have tried to slip him in to see the Emperor like planned after baiting out Tobias.

Similarly, no matter what the PCs did to Karl, when they arrive in Wolfenburg the starving, crazy Crusade invites them back, with Karl personally telling everyone they're great guys and gals. Which is weird; he does this even if you tried and failed to murder him. What's his game here? No-one knows, it's just necessary for the campaign to continue, so shut up and get back in your seat. Keep your hands and legs inside the ride until the railroad is over. The Crusade is suffering since our heroes last saw it. Being without Karl for awhile made most of the Crusade realize this was sort of stupid and they went home, sheepishly excusing themselves. Being without his aura for over a month breaks the effect; heck, you only have to be outside it for a few days, which means Johan and Sif check to see if they get re-mind-whammied. Johan's WP has also increased immensely; he put all 400 or so EXP from last adventure into it. Which means Johan is no longer under Karl's spell. However, the party still seems to be on board with rescuing the kid, so he goes along with it, wondering why he used to be so rapturous about this. Sif similarly breaks free after a Fortune point, which means they basically could have just dragged the kid away from all this and brought him somewhere safe, or talked to him more carefully about why he wants to go to Kislev, but again: No getting off this train. Just remember none of our heroes are mind-whammied for the rest of the story. They'll have to justify participating entirely based on their own free wills. Sif is also a little annoyed, realizing she's been calling someone 'Better Sigmar', but an oath is an oath and she's no oath-breaker, so she still tells the kid she'll protect him.

Wolfenburg is a problem for the Crusade because there are few people, there's no safety, and there isn't any food. They can't 'live off the land'. A huge series of Chaos Armies already lived off this land, and that means this year's harvest is already fucked, most of the farms and larders are already looted and/or burned, significant portions of Ostland are blighted and will need Rhyans/Taalites and Jade Magisters to come unfuck them, and there's no trade to stick up and ask for donations. Meanwhile, the Wood Elves are coming back, though somewhere along the way the lone elf the PCs saved in the coaching inn has become their leader instead, probably because with so many authors writing each chapter they didn't keep NPCs straight. Also, a Necharch Vampire who knows the interpretation of the prophecies the others are using are dumb Chaos bullshit is waiting in the wings to eat Karl. He believes a crazy legend where Sigmar went east to become a vampire when he was getting old, and thinks that since this boy is obviously a Sigmar, if he eats the Sigmar, HE becomes Sigmar, but not just a Sigmar, some kind of DOUBLE SIGMAR. A double king is powerful enough, imagine a double emperor. While the book talks about Lord d'Trois as a madman, the fact that his plan is the only one among the many vamps that will not lead to him being duped by Chaos means the Necharch is probably the smartest vampire villain in the book. He isn't actually very powerful; he's 'only' Mag 3, has 2 attacks, and is physically weaker than the Strigoi mooks from Chicken Attack. But like Sofia last chapter he's got some well trained soldiers who will be backing him up when the time comes. Unlike Sofia, his opposition is pretty badass, too (and not just the PCs). Things are going to be a clusterfuck later.

Anyway, with the Crusade falling apart, Helmut has hit on the crazy idea that (in addition to getting Karl back) they can fix everything by raising everyone's spirits and getting them all back together with a passion play about the life of Sigmar. If you guessed the PCs were going to eventually get roped into acting, good on you. Which is hilarious, given they have a giant Norsewoman, an elf, and a hobbit. And a cute magical raccoon. Adding magical animals and elves to a play about Sigmar will be fun! Legit I'm fine with setting up a long excuse to have the PCs be terrible actors while trying to protect Karl from an assassination attempt after solving a mystery. The basic outline of Chapter 6 is fine. Another thing I like is that while there's an extensive timetable of events once the play starts up, for ONCE the damn thing says 'hey, if the PCs succeed at one of these tests early or come up with something that spots Lord d'Trois or the elves waiting in the wings to shoot Karl or whatever, interrupt the play early! Let the PCs get ahead of the game and give them a better chance to succeed!' This is a first! A timetable of events full of chances for the PCs to realize things are amiss and that actually give them a good chance of getting the drop on the plotters if they move quickly? Holy hell, is this still Thousand Thrones?

But to get there, we've got another linear investigation to get through. First, our heroes are officially named Templars of the Child, for rescuing Karl from his enemies. Helmut is besides himself with joy, and the heroes recognize that Tobias's 'designated asshole' place on the inner circle has been taken by an increasingly fat Father Johannes. While everyone around him is starving, Johannes has been able to swing plenty of food for himself; he may be under Karl's spell, but he's still the same fat asshole priest he always was. He's as devoted to Karl as he ever was to Sigmar, which is to say mostly in service to himself. I wish more was done with this element of the campaign; the campaign is so full of vampires and nurglites that the whole 'people become devoted to Karl, but then use him as an excuse to still be assholes, mirroring the flaws of the wider Sigmarite faith' plotline never gets to breathe or take center stage, despite being one of the strongest plot concepts. The story throws up an actually interesting element for some of its villains like Johannes, but then sidelines them over and over again for more goopy mutations, piles of shit, and shoehorned in vampires to try to sell the vampire sourcebook that none of them are even properly using. There's also a new fight-guy to replace Krieger, but he doesn't do anything so eh.

Anyway, first there's a mostly pointless set of scenes of the heroes being 'templars of the child', though it does include the fun of the heroes now having adoring fans within the Crusade who regard them as amazing servants of Sigmar. Yes, even the elf wizard. How people invent justification for that I don't know; maybe they say it's like Teclis and Magnus. Yes, I think the camp compares her to Teclis, which is really funny to a Druchii. The only important encounter during this time is when the old character actor selected to play Warboss Grimgut in the upcoming HELDENHAMMER: THE LIFE OF SIGMAR approaches the team. He isn't interested in the role; too much action and physicality, too much stage fighting, and as a thin old character actor he's not a very convincing orc. While she's the wrong gender, he HAS noticed they have someone very large who is very at home speaking languages no-one understands; the role of Grimgut is supposedly written in Orcish, but the lines are all gibberish because the auteur director has no idea what orcish sounds like and wouldn't let anyone change them. He offers Sif a golden crown to pretend to be an orc and fight Sigmar so he can get out of this nonsense and leave the crusade. She tells him he could've stopped at 'fight Sigmar'. Sif will fulfill the dream of all Norse AND get a shiney gold coin out of it. And maybe she will become a famous actress! The party is skeptical. This encounter is designed to get the heroes involved with the play, even before they know it's important. Also note absolutely no-one in this party knows how to act. This will be played for comedy, and rotten fruit.

However, first our heroes have to encounter a dead Strigany, Warham's not very well done not-Roma. Ali is the father of Ahmed, a little Strigany boy who is meant to have annoyed the PCs occasionally before now. Ahmed will be important next chapter when a vampiress tries to kidnap and marry him. Ali's death is completely at random, poisoned by the minions of Lord d'Trois to make sure their poison works so they can start poisoning actors and replacing them in the play, in order to get themselves a chance to get at Karl. I would think randomly poisoning someone with an obvious poisoning death (Katarine's medical and apothecary knowledge is enough to not only point out he's been poisoned rather than choking, but to ID the poison as Chokeweed Extract, which causes throat swelling and strangulation) is merely a good way to make sure people investigate poisoners, but what do I know, I just write things, I'm not an assassin. The adventure commits an annoying sin here: When the players start looking for where Ali got the distinctive wineskin that killed him (it has a coiled serpent motif), 'you should let them roll dice a little and then give them all the information'. If they're just going to learn everything automatically, don't bother with the dice, damnit! It's better than 'Per-10 to continue plot', I guess, but not by a lot. To find out where the maker's mark came from, the heroes will have to go into Wolfenburg itself. This leads to possible random encounters in the city (most of them not dangerous) and a paper chase to find the maker. If the heroes IDed the poison, and having a competent doctor on their team, they did, they instead just need a Gossip+10 to hear about Boris the Herbalist, a guy who makes extracts like that within the city.

Boris is a scarred and burnt man, who suffered terribly in the sack. His chronic pain has taken the last of his conscience, and while he isn't malicious, the apothecary is happy to sell poison as well as healing now. He figures what people do with it is their own problem. With a little Charm from Katarine and Shanna, they get him to talk. The extract has uses besides killing people; diluted enough it makes both a dye and a good skin balm. At full strength it's great for murder. Some rough looking fellow named Karl (no relation to magic child) with a blue belt bought 3 vials, a Sigmarite friar bought 1, and a well to do gentleman named Dietrich von Dorf also bought 3. Our heroes now have some suspects. They also get Boris's sales pitch: He'll sell all kinds of useful apothecary stuff, notably Healing Draughts, at pretty reasonable prices. They pick up a few Healing Draughts for times when someone's hurt and Katarine's busy or not present, and some Healing Poultices and supplies for Katarine's doctor's bag so she can heal heavily wounded people more easily. Their way of giving the guy some quid-pro-quo for answering their questions. If the heroes hadn't talked him into this, just barging in and searching his office would find bills of sale that gave them the same info without tests, but would cut them off from buying supplies permanently. They get back to the Crusade, having completely ignored the other track for finding the apothecary despite it being apparently sort of important to next chapter. Hooray.

There's a lot of 'the players roll, but if they fail, something else happens to get them the information they need' during this investigation. Which isn't bad on its own, but it's unevenly done. Stuff like 'if you have to just barge in and take Boris's bills of sale, you lose access to a good and relatively cheap merchant for alchemical supplies' is a good way to do it; they always get the minimum they need for the plot, but miss out on a nice bonus or sour a relationship. Stuff like 'let them roll dice for awhile, then tell them everything' is not. Dice should only hit the table when it matters in some way. Especially given Fortune points exist and players can and will throw them at what they think are important investigative rolls. This investigative section is yet another linear investigation with a pre-set path of strict clues, and really I just don't think any of these authors have it in them to write a good investigative scenario, which is very difficult to do I'll grant. Mysteries are actually pretty hard to do in RPGs sometimes. At least it's all leading up to a genuinely fun setpiece for the finale, which really does have space for the players to matter by being clever and having the right skills. Plus, it's an excuse to dress a PC up as an orc or have PCs mill about stage awkwardly trying to remember their lines. Who doesn't want that as part of a tense cat and mouse game with assassins? I think Chapter 6 is overall going to come out the strongest chapter in Thousand Thrones.

Next Time: Investigations.

ACTING (Also investigation)

posted by Night10194 Original SA post

Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 2e: Thousand Thrones

ACTING (Also investigation)


So, before they can get to the passion play, the heroes have to solve a murder. This is surprisingly straightforward. Two of the leads they have are false, but lead to short mini-adventures, one is correct and leads directly to the real culprits. What they see is going to be based on what they investigate first; if you hadn't guessed, the well to do gentleman is the culprit while the rough jerk named Karl and the monk are the false leads. They're short, though, so our heroes will look into the monk first.

The Monk is Brother Marcus, the leader of the Order of the Veil. He believes he has an authentic holy veil imprinted with images of Karl. The images and things have begun to fade, and fearing the relic will no longer inspire hope, he's taken the drastic measure of buying Chokeweed Extract to use as a dye. He genuinely believes his relic is real and is just trying to help people, just in a silly way. His guilty conscience is easy to penetrate, because having to paint the relic has made him fear he's a fraud, too. His little group of monks have done nothing but spend the trip trying to heal people and lend comfort to them, he's just having a moment of weakness because he sees how bad things are in camp and is trying to make sure people have something to believe in. A Charm test from the Initiate of Rhya/doctor Katarine helps get through to him, and he admits he was touching up the Veil and has no intention of poisoning anyone, showing them the empty vial for the extract. Unfortunately for them, this is overheard. Angry zealots from the Crusade descend to tear the Veil apart as a fake, and Marcus is left sobbing and miserable. Katarine stays with him for awhile to try to comfort him while the others start the legwork on 'Karl', catching up with them later.

The Bluebelts are the next group, and they're absolute dicks. Their leader is an interesting example of character coming from Career; he's an Initiate to Demagogue to Crime Lord. His name is Morgan, but he calls himself Karl. All the Bluebelts call themselves Karl. As a young man, he was indentured to a priest, and he learned much of how to use the form of Sigmar's word and the cult's tendencies towards authoritarianism, xenophobia, and monodominism to get what he wants. Now he runs a sect of 'purity' obsessed thugs, who beat up 'heretics' and steal their shit. He's a crime boss and a huckster, using the darker tendencies of Sigmarism to put together his little blackshirt posse and make him a comfortable life among the Crusaders. He's also not the killer. Nor did he buy the extract. No, that was his second in command. While Morgan calls himself Karl 2nd, his 2nd is Karl 3rd, who bought the stuff to look for an opportunity to knock off his lazy boss and take over the racket. Because it's finally an opportunity for her, ahead of investigating, Shanna breaks into their tent (Stealth-20, which she can handle) and picks Karl 2 (Morgan's) chest open. Inside is a huge score of 112 crowns and 234 shillings (about another 10 crowns worth), some fine silk they took from someone they beat (25 more crowns in value), and Morgan's journal. Which is full of incriminating stuff about his plans, but nothing about poisoning. She happily robs the asshole, and then the group goes to confront him. If you confront him in any way, he invites you to dinner to try to talk you out of being a problem (and do it on his own turf). Morgan doesn't like violence in his own presence. Unfortunately, this distraction is what Karl 3rd uses to try to poison Morgan.

Per-30 will spot the poisoning, and get Karl 3rd fucked up real bad and Morgan telling you everything he knows in gratitude. If they don't, Karl 3rd blames the PCs for the poisoning (whether Morgan survives with a save or not) and the other Bluebelts try to beat the shit out of them (or kill them, if Morgan died). Karl 3rd almost, almost gets away with it with our heroes, but Oleg makes the roll and spots the poisoning attempt, the last PC to roll. The chances someone notices are pretty good, hence the -30 since the whole party is attempting it. The heroes tell Morgan they know who he is, too, and that he'd best cut his shit out lest he end up dead like most crime bosses, pointing to what his lackey just tried. He tells them the last suspect Dieter keeps really weird company and was seen talking to an elf on the edges of the forest recently. This is true; Dieter and d'Trois's minions have captured some of the wood elves while they poked around the camp. The Bluebelts are pretty weak if it comes to a fight; they're just bullies, not a match for a team of seasoned adventurers. Our heroes are content that they stole every penny Morgan's made and have incriminating evidence about his BS to turn over to Father Helmut later, so no need to beat every one of these jerks.

Finally, our heroes deal with Dieter. Dieter is a highly talented spy, who has been working for the vampire for years. It's made him a lot of money, and while he was once a political agitator pushing for the liberty of the Empire, now he's just here for the money and doesn't give a shit about killing a little kid. This is a chance for Johan to match wits spy against spy, and if the heroes carefully eavesdrop on Dieter and his men, they'll hear them discussing replacing the actors and using the play as cover to strike at Karl. They can also learn this is they barge in, make trouble, and get in a fight, but Dieter is pretty dangerous and he's got a lot of weak toadies. Shanna gets back to robbing to look for any additional evidence (treasure), and if you do this, you can steal a ruby worth 50 crowns, and about 52 crowns (and 204 shillings!) from Dieter's stuff, as well as find costumes that show his sect is practicing to get into the play and replacing the actors. The party has made a goddamn killing robbing these jerks and Shanna is bouncing around happily all day.

Naturally, the next step is to use the play to ferret out who the would-be-killers are, involving the heroes both backstage and on stage to stop the plot. This is the highlight of the adventure, and genuinely fun. It's a bit of a contrived setup (even if the players fought and killed Dieter and his minions, the actual assassins would still be in place for the play, etc) but I forgive it because c'mon, they get to insert themselves into an over the top Sigmarite passion play to thwart a vampire. After talking it over with Helmut, they approach the Director, Wilhelm Schumaur, who already knows Sif is his new Grimgut. Syphan volunteers to use her magic to help with 'special effects' (she can generate light and sound, after all), Shanna and Johan get jobs backstage, Katarine is standing by in case anyone breaks a leg, Oleg gets cast as Kurgan Ironbeard, King of the Dwarfs, Rose is running around backstage to quietly warn the others of trouble, and this is all set up to go crazy.

The fun part about the play is that while it has a strict timeline of events, these are 'in case the players don't go loud yet' and 'unless the players intervene' sorts of things. If they find Lord d'Trois in the audience and make him out, they can always make chaos erupt at any point by attacking him (and indeed, it will be easier to keep him from Karl if they move faster). His plan is for a smoke bomb disguised as special effects to go off during act 2 when the porters are pushing around a great boar Sigmar hunted as a boy with his dad. Then the assassins will keep anyone from interfering as he runs in and grabs Karl, then drags him off to eat him. Unfortunately for him and his assassins, the heroes know about the overall plot and are alert for trouble, so what will happen now is a bunch of improvising on both sides. Meanwhile, the elves try to set up a sniper position and kill Karl, but no matter what they'll end up taking a shot at d'Trois first since he gets in the way of their attack.

For act 1, Katarine gets pushed out onto stage to play a shepardess since they're short on actors, which she has to do with Fel-20 since she doesn't have Acting. Note PCs who actually HAVE Acting can provide a great distraction from their friends working backstage on the assassin stuff by actually giving a good performance. Unfortunately, Katarine wasn't expecting to do this and suffers stage fright, flubbing her one line badly and sending the scene off kilter a little. Fortunately, Rose's Keen Raccoon Senses pick up the unnatural vampire creeping slowly through the crowd in a big cloak, and she points it out to Syphan. Meanwhile, Johan and Shanna discover the bomb and declare themselves the porters for the boar for scene 2. In the middle of it all, Shanna steals the bomb (Sleight of Hand-20), puts out the wick, and throws it in the trash. This has already ruined the plan of the Herald of the New Dawn Assassins, and alerts them that the heroes are trouble. They begin to adjust and prepare to arm their "Sigmar" for Act 3; they figure a real weapon against a prop weapon (and all the fake pigs blood bags for blood squibs) will let them murder Sif, the most dangerous fighter, with little trouble. Shanna's Thief Signs skill also picks up on a few of the assassins backstage as they signal to get ready to kill Shanna and Johan.

Shanna, Johan, Oleg, and Katarine go to quietly deal with assassins backstage to get some of them out of the picture, not realizing Sif is getting sent out there to fight a genuinely armed man. You get Per tests to realize his costume armor is real armor and his warhammer is real, with the idea that backstage PCs come up with ways to even the odds as their friend faces 'Sigmar' out on the stage. Syphan warns Sif, but it's too late and Sif is already on stage. You can run from the fight, which the crowd loves (because the cowardly orc is fleeing Sigmar!) or you can do this the Sif way. She's Norse. It's time for her to finally fight fucking Sigmar, for real. After her lines. Meanwhile, the heroes have dropped several of the assassins that planned to quietly murder them backstage, and are hiding the bodies while Katarine talks the camp guards out of investigating with Charm. Sif tries Fel-30 to be a convincing Warboss, since she doesn't have Acting. Sif gets a 12, just barely failing; she's making it, yelling in Norse and strutting a bit, when someone who speaks the language yells 'THAT AIN'T ORCISH! THAT'S JUST NORSE!' from the audience. Boos follow as the killjoy ruins her debut, and then Sigmar takes a swing at her head. Sigmar is a dangerous fighter; he's a Sergeant and former Mercenary, with stats about 10 points below Sif in most places. She has a costume and a prop choppa. He has a real warhammer and chain armor. Syphan thinks fast and summons light, which dazzles him and penalizes his stats as his 'halo of holy power' malfunctions. Sig dodges the first two swings, then resorts to tackling him to Grapple. Once she has him on the ground, she starts trying to take the weapon and punching the shit out of him, as the crowd yells in disbelief that this play is showing Holy Sigmar struggling so.

Seeing his agent defeated is a trigger for D'Trois to go loud. Our heroes' version of this devolves to a Norsewoman in an Orc costume picking up 'Ghal Maraz' to rush a vampire as he charges the box, while a dwarf dressed like King Ironbeard charges to help the 'orc'. The fighting backstage spills out onto the stage as actors and extras run everywhere, a tiny raccoon trying not to get stepped on as the other heroes grapple and knife-fight with the remaining 4 assassins. The elves take their shot and damage the vampire, who then finds himself fighting the two warriors at once (and he's not a great fighter for a vamp) while the crowd rushes the stage to protect Karl. Syphan flings her magic into the clump of elves up in the high seats, trying to flashbang them, as Lorinoc the Elf Ranger orders a retreat. Everything is crazy for a few minutes, until our bloodied heroes are all standing on stage in disarray, the vampire is ash, everyone is yelling, and Karl is crying. Lacking any idea of what to do now, they take a bow, including the raccoon. This is the good shit. This an actual climax for an adventure.

If Sif had run, they'd have moved on to Oleg's scene, while more craziness and knife-fighting went on backstage. Meanwhile, the Heralds try to knife someone backstage with poison and also realize the 'actors' playing Grimgut and Ironbeard aren't their plants (especially as their group had no dwarfs). They start stepping up the attempts to murder the heroes backstage. Finally, there would have been the Battle of Black Fire Pass, with dozens of actors and gallons of pig blood on stage as they try to have a special effects extravaganza and the last 'easy' chance for the heroes to interrupt D'Trois or the elves. After that would come Sigmar's battle with Nagash, and D'Trois wouldn't be able to resist revealing himself and attacking, the dramatic irony of going for 'Sigmar' (Karl) during the Nagash being too strong for any vampire to resist. At any point that things go loud, total chaos erupts.

There's a ton going on in this part and lots of room to add your own. The GMing advice is great, telling you to keep things moving and shift attention enough to give all the PCs things to do, encouraging them to counterplan and plan against their enemies and improvise as they identify stuff out of place, and giving you enough material on what happens when things go loud to make a memorable climax. This is probably the first genuinely satisfying adventure conclusion in the series, as they save Karl from the attack (it notes the adventure works better if the PCs are trying to actually protect him) and are hailed as heroes.

Too bad he immediately gets 'kidnapped' again in the next act. Ah well.

Chapter 6 is genuinely pretty good. There are parts of the investigation that are too linear, but the play is a great comic and adventure setpiece that makes a great conclusion. This is also the first adventure in awhile where there was anything serious for the spy and thief to do! And the PCs actually got significant reward (albeit from stealing it from assholes, but that only makes it better!). Sif also takes Sigmar's lunch money, which amounts to 12 crowns. She has fulfilled the dream of every Norse: Punch Sigmar.

Next Time: Von Carsteinning

After Nazis

posted by Night10194 Original SA post

Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 2e: Thousand Thrones

After Nazis

So, the book suggests inserting Terror in Talabheim here if you own it. And you know, I did just review it. It also suggests PCs should be 'finishing their 2nd Career' at the beginning of Chapter 7. I want to point out this is a terrible way to yardstick things, and to do that, the party is set to the character who will most struggle to finish his career, Johan. Johan took 5100 EXP to finish Spy. Spy is insanely long. So assume they had an entire, much better adventure where they fought rat nazis enough to gain 29 advances between Chapter 6 ending and Chapter 7 starting. This also gives me an excuse to show off what genuine high level PCs look like, and how goddamn terrifying they are.

Sif Gundredsdottir, The Champion of Challenges


Sif Gundredsdottir has not found any of the immense treasure her father told her was to be had in the south by being an Adventurer. She's found some treasure, true; she's decked out in proper Imperial plate armor, she's got fine weapons, etc etc. She's certainly found some glory, now having been a major part of saving the city of Talabheim, fighting multiple vampires, and otherwise being the giant, armored bulwark that keeps her friends alive. But she's beginning to suspect her old man just got lucky and she's never going to earn enough to buy her own freehold and thralls back home. She did, however, get to punch the shit out of 'Sigmar' in front of a bunch of Sigmarites, and that does make her happy. She's also spent the last couple weeks shooting, stabbing, and strangling rat nazis, which was certainly an interesting experience. More than anything, she sticks around because of the friends she's made. Whatever track they're on, she's going to see it through to the end. She's been through this much shit (literally, in some cases) with these people, and they need her. Until this is over, nothing that stands against them will stand against her.

Look at Sif's stats. This is what a 5000 EXP+ pure Fighter looks like. Sif has a slightly less than even chance of soloing the potential final boss of the campaign, who is meant to be invincible and unkillable. You remember how numbers were so dangerous awhile back? Sif's rocking DR 12, and hits for Damage 8 in melee. She's a good shot with her bow, too, and she's only going to get better. She still has the option of picking up some more weapons, and her physical stats are basically unbeatable outside of someone like a Grail Knight, a powerful Vampire, or a Chaos Lord. Even then, she'd be able to take the basic Chaos Champion in a duel. Sif only does one thing, but she does that thing insanely well. Even without her mutation, she'd still have hit SB 6, TB 6. Champions are the real goddamn deal and they're surprisingly easy to get into. Veteran is strong, but it isn't that long for a 2nd tier. Champion IS pretty long, since you have to master melee and ranged, but at the end of it you've mastered melee and ranged. Many combats that would have overwhelmed the whole group earlier in the campaign? Sif could solo them now. Those 12 Lahmian thugs? Sif could probably handle all 12 of them at once, since most of their attacks would bounce off her DR, her active defenses, etc. None of the remaining Vampire enemies are actually a match for Sif.

Syphan of Naggarythe (Naggarond), The Best Witch Elf

Syphan never quite expected to be fighting Skaven. To be truthful, she didn't expect half of what she's run into since leaving Marienburg; the world seems even more violent than her homeland in Naggarond sometimes. And she loves it. Ever since she left home, she's sought to challenge herself. While she's proven extremely unable to grasp 'high magic' the way she originally planned to, she was able to pick up a few cross-wind conjurations that make her terrifying in battle. Able to call the Amber Wind and Red Wind to some degree, she remains strong in the White, only now she's capable of massively enhancing her ability to rip people apart with her bare hands. A tactic she originally developed to terrify Stormvermin during the team's phase as resistance leaders, but it seems to come naturally to her. In many ways, she's completed her transition from elf who is a witch to being a Witch Elf of Naggarond, all on her own meandering path of martial arts and magic. She has no idea where the team's current destiny is taking them anymore; things just seem to happen randomly, though she's quite angry at the crazy Asrai who keep following them around and continually failing to kill a nine year old boy. She's come to see many reflections of Malekith's own authoritarian madness in the manner of the Sigmarite fanatics who made up parts of the Crusade, and she's sworn to help her friends get the kid at the center of it all away from it if only to stop him going down that path. Nobody's allowed to end up like her homeland. One fucked up authoritarian nightmare ruled by its 'god-king' overlord is more than enough for this world already.

She still misses maple syrup. That one bottle didn't last long.

Syphan is mechanically the absolute weirdest character on the team. She probably would have been stronger if she devoted herself to either being a warrior OR a wizard. But I looked at her stats, I looked at her character, and I said 'FUCK IT LET'S DO BOTH', and the end product is a weird-ass character who can rip and tear with her bare hands (Claws of Fury is an insanely good weapon summon, because it's +1 Attacks, +10% to hit, and the 'claws' are both Hand Weapons with Fast, which means you're dual-wielding, which means you can Free Parry with your bare hands), throw bolts of fire, fire her laser eyes, fuck up demons, and also kill people with a big goddamn axe if she prefers. Her physical stats are good enough to hang with real fighters, and the 'light' armor she's wearing gives her just enough DR that she can rely on her active defenses. She still has all her utility magic, and her ability to speak spooky evil languages will really help! She's also become way less of just a furious heroic dumbass thanks to her magical raccoon; Rose picked up Link of Psyche, which makes them both smarter. Rose has also spent her own EXP on a total of +40 Int, Resistance to Chaos, Knowledge (Science), and Knowledge (History). Rose is extremely smart. Rose is smarter than her master. Rose is actually probably the smartest person on the team with Link of Psyche making her Int 65.

Shanna Applebottom, Resistance Commander

When Shanna set out from the Moot, she did not anticipate becoming a feared Resistance commander. She never really expected that her talent for mathematics and organization would have to be put to use picking who and where they would engage in calculated and precise political violence. But she turned out to be very good at it. While Sif and Syphan terrified their foes, while Oleg served as a commando and Johan infiltrated, and Katarine kept spirit and body alive, Shanna was always found with the map-table and lists of the citizens and soldiers they'd recruited. The same skills that would have made her an excellent businesswoman or a highly effective mafioso turned out to be quite helpful for shepherding limited resources and limited manpower to hit an infinite swarm of screaming rat nazis as hard as possible. She's come out of it more confident, and more dangerous, than she ever was going in. Now that the great work of liberating Talabheim is done, she turns her mind and her friends towards finishing the fight they started so long ago when they left Middenheim. It feels like a lifetime since she was just a humble thief upset at the rivers of corruption flowing through Marienburg; now she's seen the world can be so much worse. And what can you do but swim upstream and do what you can to put it all back to order and set it right?

Shanna is still a competent thief and infiltrator. Now she's also a talented leader and social character. She's just about done with Crime Lord and will head from there into Master Thief, finally picking back up at being an expert infiltrator now that her duties in Talabheim are at an end. She's still the worst in the party in a fight by a longshot, and the Repeater Crossbow is a terrible weapon, but she can shoot twice for Damage 2 and that's honestly better than a single rock a turn for Damage 3. Her social and infiltration skills will mostly go unused at the latter part of the campaign; she has them because they're logical developments of her character and career path, not because they're particularly useful for the adventure. Shanna has probably suffered the most for her role being somewhat underused; a lot of the time she's just the worst fighter in the party and not much else. Which is a shame, because she's a highly competent face and rogue.

Johan Kleiner, the unshakable agent

Like everyone in the Thousand Crowns, Johan has come a long, long way. He barely remembers why he wanted to be a chef; those days sweeping the floors and coming up with recipes are so far away they may as well have belonged in another life. Ever since realizing he'd been 'had' by Karl's powers, Johan has trained himself to be nearly impossible to shake or control. He's learned all manner of tricks to conceal his mind from magic and dark powers; projecting the wrong emotions, reciting repetitive recipes mentally, lying with his entire being if he has to. While he wants to save the boy like the rest of them, he will not be used again; whatever he chooses to do in the future, he will do of his own free will and not because of any compulsion effect or any order from those who think themselves above him. His skills at blending in (and at quietly murdering ratmen) were very useful throughout the campaign in Talabheim; spies were essential to discovering where they had to strike, and his abilities at both deceit and self control let him slip among the Skaven as if he was nothing but an ordinary slave, able to bear any misfortune or abuse. Until he was garroting the Clawleader and stealing all their documents, of course. He's gained enough experience ending lives as well as watching them that he's accepted the grim reality of being an assassin as well as an agent; whatever BS the Thousand Crowns face, he's sure it will involve shedding blood.

Johan's an okay fighter. He'll be a much better one in about 300 EXP. Whenever it's actually been allowed, though, Johan is way better at being a spy and agent than he is at being a backline warrior. He's got the most straightforward path outside of Sif's basic 'I Am A Fight Gal', but Spy is an insanely long career and so took him forever to actually finish. Note he's highly intelligent, basically unshakeable (especially with Resistance to Magic), and generally a far cry from the simple cook/sanitation engineer who made friends with Syphan and decided to form an adventuring party. It's a terrible shame his skills as an infiltrator will mostly go unused for most of the campaign, and Assassin isn't a particularly great career anyway. The only real talent it's got is giving him facility with poisons and 3 attacks. But it'll do.

Oleg Balinson, the man who has seen it all

Oleg really thought this job was going to involve the out of doors more than it did. A true Dwarven Ranger, he's still found ways to apply his axe and his crossbow against the enemies of his people, his clan, and his friends. Slaying Skaven is always a good thing any true dwarf should be ready to do, and the big Norsewoman needs some backup on the front lines or she'll just get herself into more trouble. Especially now that the crazy elf keeps jumping in to try to rip things apart with her hands. Oleg prides himself on being one of the most level-headed of the team; the dwarf has to be, everyone else seems to go a bit sideways in the stress. His quick feet, steady aim, and excellent axe hand made him a hero in Talabheim, even if he can't quite keep up with Sif on the front lines. His skill with tunnels and navigation helped the resistance time and again. But that mess is over, and a good dwarf's work is never done. Now he turns his attention to hunting other prey; the vampires seem to get in their way at every turn, and there are plenty of grudges to settle with those bastards anyway. Somebody on this team should have some damn idea what they're fighting, and it always seems to fall to the dwarf to do the hard work.

Oleg is on the cusp of being way better. He suffers some for flavor; he should really be using a Longbow, it's inherently superior, but c'mon, what dwarf ever used an elf weapon. He's tough, he's skilled in a fight with shield and axe, he's still fast as hell for a dwarf, and he knows his Ranger business well. He just suffers the fact that Rangers have fuckall to do in this campaign. Not a one has there been a serious wilderness section where the right move wasn't to hire a guide. If the team had relied on Oleg doing the job he was created to do, they'd have suffered immensely because the book punishes you for not having guides. Oleg is about to kick this shit into high gear, though; as soon as he finishes Vampire Hunter (and he's almost done with it) he's headed right to WITCH HUNTER, which is a hell of a 3rd tier. Amusingly, he'll be entering that career about when they finish fighting Vampire Bullshit and get on to fighting Witch Bullshit. The dwarf knows to be prepared. He's planned it all out.

Katarine, the awakened priestess

Not simply a doctor any longer, Katarine has found a world she never knew existed. The blessings of Rhya have fallen upon her as she's fought to defend her newfound cult against the despoilment of the Skaven, seeking to comfort the people, heal the sick, and kill the goddamn rat nazi. Magic has found her, and her prayers have awakened into a power she could never have imagined; where she blesses her friends, they find the strength of the bear, the speed of the stag, and the comfort of the mother of all. Plants grow in her wake, and her body has changed, growing taller and broader in the image of her goddess. No-one who looks at her now would see the thin and terrified girl the heroes rescued in that dark sewer months ago. She considers the task of rescuing Karl from the Crusade and bringing this distortion to an end a holy charge from the mother of all; giving the boy the home he wishes for could put an end to so much pain and grief. She is forever grateful to her friends for helping her out of that dark hole, and all she's learned can be bent to keeping them sane and alive as they try to cut through to the end of their long quest.

Katarine is an amazing doctor. Katarine also has a goddamn Divine Lore, and got pretty favorable Divine Marks. Of all the heroes, she's probably the most changed physically, having become much more of an image of a fertility goddess through the blessings of Rhya. Her magical support can buff up allies; she can do stuff like give someone +20% to Str or let them move farther and Charge as a half action. She can heal allies magically, letting the team act like they'd rested for several days and spent time recovering from sickness and fatigue. She can AOE STUN. Divine Magic is goddamn awesome, and the Taal and Rhya Lore she uses is a real winner. She's in Warrior Priest because it's honestly just better than Anointed Priest for the majority of characters. She'll slowly become a fairly competent combatant, but her real job is still being a medic. She just has powerful support magic and excellent social skills now, too. Not bad for someone who was supposed to die to show the PCs they couldn't do anything to make the world a better place.

Together, they cover all the bases of a party and they're pretty terrifyingly effective. Most characters at this level are; it's basically impossible to build a 'bad' PC at this point. Even Syphan, whose class mix is as crazy as she is, is legitimately really effective and has been ever since she unlocked Lore of Light. Very little of what's coming will be particularly mechanically difficult for them except the final dungeon, and that's...well, that's going to be its own thing. This is the campaign's own damn fault for telling me to 'make sure they finished their 2nd Careers' and 'Insert Terror In Talabheim in if you want more fun!'. Sadly, the upcoming adventures are going to really suck compared to Chapter 6 and TiT, but hey. They had a good run of real adventures, first.

Next Time: Are You Excited About Coaching Itineraries!?

Calculate your traveling expenses and bathe in DEEP LORES

posted by Night10194 Original SA post

Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 2e: Thousand Thrones

Calculate your traveling expenses and bathe in DEEP LORES

So why were our heroes in Talabheim anyway? Well, the day after the insane play, Karl got kidnapped again. That's just how he does; little guy's like Princess Peach. Except this time he wasn't kidnapped at all. This time he was off to Taalagad with the permission of Father Helmut and with a hitherto mostly unmentioned Priest of Morr named Friedrich. Karl is still trying to get to Kislev, and he had a dream telling him he needed to learn something from a Kislevite seer in Taalagad. Helmut assured him he could keep the band together while he took care of the sidequest, but he gets nervous and asks our heroes to catch up with Friedrich (who is carrying Karl in a coffin, again, for some reason. They even mention Karl kind of likes it by now, if only to get away from the crowds). He pays them 10 crowns each and sends them out on an adventure in finding exact travel arrangements, because I'm just gonna level with you: This is written by Jude 'Calculate the Trade Matrices' Hornburg. If you recognize his work from WHFRP Companion, dude is just super excited about subsystems, matrices, and exact travel times. He is also a tremendously dull author to read. Like his prose is just plain flavorless. This chapter is genuinely a struggle just on that level.

It also isn't helped by being A: Entirely a red herring that doesn't matter at all to the plot of the adventure despite taking the heroes all the way into Sylvania on their way out of the way and B: Full of 'deep lore' about Nagash and magic power words that don't end up mattering at all because they're pathetically weak in gameplay terms AND you get sidebars talking about how you can just decide they don't work depending on how much of the bullshit lore you decide is true or not. Death Do Us Part is so disconnected from the plot that it even has a sidebar saying 'if the heroes decide they're sick of this or don't follow up, just deduct any travel expenses (make sure you calculate them!) and then move on top chapter 8'. Actually, both Chapter 7 and Chapter 8 can effectively be skipped at certain points. Tempting as that is (7 is insanely boring and 8 is close to 5 in how bad it is), I'm here to write this shit up and talk about why it's good or bad, not just to write fanfiction to keep myself entertained. So our heroes agreed, made their way to Taalagad, and then got waylaid by plague and nazis as the book suggests you might.

Before we get to that, we've got to get into the Deep Lore. The funny thing about the huge pile of exposition this starts with is how completely irrelevant most of it is to the players, and how unlikely they are to learn much of it. Much of it also doesn't square with what I know from other sources, but talks like the reader should already be very familiar with it; it's probably referencing Black Library novels I didn't read because I never read many of those? For one, it seems to be under the impression that 'most scholars agree Nagash attained Godhood'. I don't think I've ever seen him placed in the Pantheon of the Old World in any way. Nagash isn't a God. He's an insanely powerful asshole necromancer. It talks about a prophecy based around Nagash having had a mortal wife during his first exile, and thus blood descendants, who may be of immense interest to vampires and necromancers. That bit is fine; vampires being after blood relations of the Great Necromancer is a fine macguffin. The fluff claims that ancient scrolls link Nagash's power to the five bloodlines of vampires, cursed by the Old Gods of the Nehekharans. Again, this is incorrect from what I know; the Bloodlines created themselves after Nefereta jacked some of Nagash's stuff from the bonfire and (possibly with urging/help from W'Soran) made her bootleg Elixir of Life. The curses came when the vampires abandoned Nagash during his second defeat and he decided to leave them with presents like 'The Sun Fucks You Now, You Traitorous Bastards'. It also claims Sigmar put on Nagash's crown before fighting Nagash and resisted its attempts to possess him, but that 'maybe' it taught him how to become a God like Nagash, which is just weird. As far as I know the story, Siggy just got attacked by Nagash and his minions because they thought the northern barbarians would be an easy first target and they could get the juice they needed to go waste the Tomb Kings, only to find Siggy wasn't a pushover and neither was his new Empire.

The thing is, none of this matters at all. It takes up several pages of the book, but it's basically irrelevant to the plot of both this adventure from the perspective of the characters (aside from the fact that the second kid Macguffin is a potential Scion of Nagash) and to the wider campaign. Remember the Thousand Thrones prophecy is nonsense a magic witch is tricking the vampires with. So specifically for this campaign, any of this nonsense above is the vampires just misinterpreting something partly because an evil hell-witch is trying to use it to trick them. Our heroes will be getting a tip-off that little Karl has fled into Sylvania, they'll follow after on an exciting adventure about coaching fees, and this is all to divert them from Kislev and make sure they arrive late and have to race against a strict time limit in the final dungeon. Literally nothing in this chapter is relevant in any way and the entire chapter is a red herring. How do they get the wrong boy? Remember the Strigany kid Ahmed? They mistake his kidnapping trail for Karl. A Von Carstein lady has arranged for Ahmed to be captured so she can eat his soul after marrying him and hopefully allow herself to become the Champion of Night who sits the Thousand Thrones and has no vampiric weaknesses because the 'curse of the Old Gods is undone'. The ritual absolutely cannot work if you're playing this version as part of this campaign, because she's just plain wrong, so there really aren't many stakes besides stopping a teenager from being forced to marry a vampire and then eaten. There's a bunch of nonsense about discovering the Power Words and coded scrolls and BS like that but I'm gonna level with ya: The Power Words do stuff like 'inflict a Damage 2 hit on a vampiric foe, which requires you testing Fel vs. their WP+10 per Mag they have to hit'. The Power Words are absolutely nonsense useless and not worthy of being an important part of an adventure; the only useful one is the one that can cancel a Blood Kiss if it's cast within a minute of it. I bet Queen Khalida wishes she'd had that, though she's probably perfectly happy being filled with high octane crazy sacred asp venom instead of blood while she sails across the ages shooting vampires and being super pissed off at Cousin Neffy.

God, Tomb Kings are cool. If we were going to go all 'it's time for Deep Nehekaran Lore' why couldn't this adventure have had some mummies in it instead?

Anyway, that's the setup. Our heroes will be chasing wholly irrelevant nonsense for far too long, solely to waste their time so that Chapter 8 and 9 are on a time limit. Oh, also, remember all the characters in the Crusade like Johannes and Helmut and Nils? They all just die instantly while the players are off doing this because without Karl around the mob breaks up and rips the inner circle to shreds. So all that stuff about Crusade Politics and factions and stuff you did for 6 chapters? None of it means shit, they all die off screen like a week after the heroes leave. Awesome!

Our heroes get paid and head for Taalagad to catch up with Karl. They join a coaching company who charges 7 GC a day, though their first trip to Taalagad is already paid for by Helmut. The story assures us that as long as they keep a careful, stamped ledger they are assured of repayment of all travel expenses. It fucking loves travel expenses. However, remember that Helmut and everyone else are all going to be extremely dead. The ledger they're told to keep is meaningless because of how Chapter 8 starts. Ha-HA! Moneysink. The PCs go to talk to Madame Yaga in Taalagad, the seer Karl supposedly went to, and she doesn't tell them anything, just asks about their own fortunes. She tells the players some vague hints about the upcoming adventure (Stuff like 'acquaint yourself with the bridge before the wedding') and then has a 'true vision' of a boy in peril, taken by the 'coal faced men'. This is Ahmed, who has been jacked by Nagash worshiping Arabian assassins unbeknownst to anyone. At this point, rat ninjas burst through the windows for our heroes, and they're whisked away to a much better adventure. By the time they're done, they decide they should probably get on rescuing the kid who got jacked by assassins since it's probably Karl. I mean, it's gotta be. Kid gets kidnapped every week, and if it has to do with vampires, it's doubly likely it's him. Then they have some DaVinci Code nonsense with finding Brother Friedrich the priest murdered in ways that show all kinds of blood and religious poses in the local temple of Morr, with lots of references to the Deep Lore above in the blood patterns and his dying pose. This doesn't really mean much, or even matter that much, so while Rose decodes the hard symbology tests (she's good at it! Also that is not an academic discipline) for fun, they get to chasing cultists. Again. Why can't they ever arrive somewhere on time for once?

Oh right. Waylaid by rat nazis.

Next Time: Travel Arrangements

Let's Talk Deepest Lore

posted by Night10194 Original SA post

Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 2e: Thousand Thrones

Let's Talk Deepest Lore

You know the big reason all the Deepest Lore about Nagash being a God and shit rubs me the wrong way in this chapter? It isn't just that it feels off from what I know of the setting and kind of out of left field. It's because it's all completely irrelevant AND it's not conveyed to the players in the slightest. The book assumes your PCs are going to be super into doing some weird DaVinci code spinoff (it's extremely clearly inspired by that garbage book) when they effectively have no reason to. There's all kinds of art they're supposed to go out of their way to look at, and a painting they're supposed to care about about Sigmar at 'the Tree of Hope' or whatever, and there's no actual in-character reason for them to care. None of it is even required to finish the scenario. Hell, for our purposes, they're just going to finish the scenario at the first opportunity because our heroes are extremely likely to suss out they've been duped as soon as they rescue Ahmed, which you can do very early. It assumes you take him with you the rest of the way to Sylvania because you're...invested, I guess? Or maybe you think they must also have Karl? Actual character motivations here are super unclear, so The Thousand Crowns will basically just save Ahmed and move on; it's much easier to write.

But don't think that gets you out of having to read all this horseshit! I did, so now it's coming to you. In general, lots of the 'DEEPEST LORE' in these adventures isn't conveyed to the players in any kind of way that would make them care, because it's written by like 8 different authors. The only important part of this adventure for the plot is it's the first time the heroes ever actually get a hint the Black Witch is even a thing, and then only if they gave that seer who misdirected them their real names. For purposes of my narrative, our heroes didn't, because it's way funnier if she's exactly as much of a nonentity to them as she is in the overall plot despite being the main villain, but otherwise as you carefully manage coaching rates and exact distances of travel and chase, she sends dreams to try to learn more about what the PCs want and get them more firmly invested in moving away from Karl so she can snatch him more easily.

Our heroes ignore the magic dreams because they don't give their full real names to shady seers (Syphan and Rose warned them it's a bad idea. It takes a WP check for a character to lie to her, but look at their Spy) and catch up with the kidnappers at the first opportunity, in the small town of Hermsdorf. Their enemies are posing as charcoal burners dragging their 'son' around, but the heroes know what's what and talk their way into the inn (Charm-10 to convince the innkeeper these people are villains). They'll try to bolt if they realize they're under attack, but the heroes also have two good stealth characters and there's a '50% chance the assassin-priest of nagash is asleep'. "Loud noises will rouse Farouk", but they talked their way in and have a lockpicker. Two of them. They stack up on the doorway like an early modern SWAT team and then pick and breach the door, Syphan flashbanging the room to keep up the comparison. Farouk the Assassin-Priest is fairly dangerous, and will spend most of the fight trying to run with Ahmed normally, since he's mostly supposed to get away here (though he can be stopped). Unfortunately for him, he also doesn't have any real armor, and he and his men have been jumped by a team of competent experienced resistance veterans. 3 weak disciples with only daggers and WS 30 don't help the WS 63 3 Attack SB 4 TB 4 Assassin much. They remind you 'Farouk has a Fate Point so he can auto-escape potentially' but fuck that. Our heroes are in NO MOOD. He ends up on the wrong end of a tag-team of Sif and Johan as the others take out his disciples, and even if the asshole got away he wouldn't have had a chance to grab the kid. The heroes having had their cool breach and clear moment, they go to rescue Karl only to find it's Ahmed the little Strigany teen. Still, saving a kid is always worthwhile, but they also quickly realize they've been had. They take the weird art object of Sigmar at the Tree of Hope because it might be worth something, tell Ahmed they'll drop him where it's safe with a little money, and jet. Katarine reminds them Karl kept saying he wanted to go to Kislev...maybe he gave them the slip to do that. They have to get to him as soon as possible!

Had they not done all this, things would have gotten way more complicated. The game assumes you'll torture the disciples (there's actually a lot of assumption PCs will use torture surprisingly often, which is a little eeehhhhh) and they'll tell you to get to Sylvania to catch Farouk and his stuff before he hands over the kid to The Dark Master. The Dark Master is Lydia von Carstein, a boring Carstein vampiress whose only major character trait is being immune to the sun. You can always suss out a bad vampire by 'lol no sun'. The heroes are also expected to for some reason spend a lot of time helping out at a Myrmidian temple along the way so they can study a fresco that might be PART OF THE PUZZLE. What puzzle? The DaVinici shit that leads to the 'power words'. If you're doing the full adventure like a sucker, you do want to do this, not because it's interesting but because you get a FATE POINT if you solve all the art object puzzles.

Also note the PCs are paying 7 GC a day, and these travels by coach take like 14 days. They were paid 10 GC each. They will not be reimbursed for their travel expenses at any point, despite the original promise. Hooray!

Next they head to Siegfriedshoff, the town that is currently the HQ of the Knights of the Raven. The Knights of the Raven are Morrite splinter crusaders who want to burn down Sylvania. When they get to Siegriedshoff, they're forced by the Warhammer Cops (Hey, it's those fuckers again!) to stop for the night and come engage with the Abbey of Morr to learn more DEEP LORE that they again, don't really have a lot of reason to even be asking about. If they refuse, infinite Warhammer Cops will spawn and drive off/kill the PCs. I did not miss Warhammer Cops. The abbey is full of trials they have to take to get the priests to tell them about the Vampire Prophecies, which again ARE A RED HERRING and are COMPLETELY WRONG because the Vampires are being duped by the Black Witch. Literally everything they learn about in all this is irrelevant to the overall plot, but it takes up a lot of space here.

They then get mistaken for soldiers sent from Marienburg to back up the Knights of the Raven and potentially get recruited to head into Sylvania. If they're honest, they're instead banished from town. There's lots of opportunities to take risks to sneak into the abbey library and read more DEEP LORE, but it all causes significant Insanity points if you're using IP, so as per usual your best policy is not to learn things and to just keep moving. There's also a subplot in Siegriefhoff if you're there for several days where the Skaven break in to try to steal stuff, first presaged by CHEESE THEFTS. The heroes can also potentially kill Rikk'tik from the Old World Bestiary during this little subplot. C'mon, Hornburg. Don't throw the awesome Clan Eshin Scholar away like that.

The heroes would then go 6-7 more days at doubled coaching rates for being in Sylvania to get to Lydia Von Carstein's town, whether they have Ahmed or not. If they have Ahmed, Lydia will meet them and try to promise them money and tell them she's a good vampire who just wants a cute husband. If they kill her there, she'll turn into mist and escape for Kislev, so she can be one of the duped sacrifices in the final bit. She's also really easy to kill. She plans to eat the kid's soul to get Nagash powers because she thinks it will make her the Champion of Night and make the whole world bend towards vampire domination somehow. It does not work if she does, it just kills Ahmed. Ahmed was apparently born in this town and originally hid away with the Strigany to keep him away from Mannfred, so Lydia could eat him herself when he was a teenager after marrying him. There's a whole chain of events at the wedding where Raven Knights break in to try to kill both Lydia and Ahmed and the PCs have to decide if they'll save Ahmed. Like all Warhammer Knights, the Raven Knights are total badasses, though an equipped party might be able to stop the six of them now especially as they'll be busy with Lydia and her undead and a three way fight gives the heroes more of a chance. Though these knights all have 3 attacks because fuck you, Raven Knight is a 3rd tier career so it's a solid mass of 6 3rd tier fighters in plate with longbows and sword and shield. PCs will eventually kill or rescue Ahmed, lots of stuff happens, none of it matters. There's also a ton of sidebars about more Deep Lore about the apotheosis of Sigmar, Myrmidia, and Nagash (Remember: NAGASH IS NOT A GOD. All of this is nonsense, and these prophecies are not correct because the Witch is just using them), and oh my God I don't care.

All of this is undercut by the fact that not only does it try to cram an entire campaign's worth of sideplot in right here, none of it is relevant. ALL OF THIS, this ENTIRE ADVENTURE, is designed to waste time so the PCs are rushing to catch up with Karl in Kislev for the finale. The only thing worse than an entire adventure that exists to waste your time is one that's also overstuffed with its own bullshit Deep Lore that the players have no real reason to seek out or care about, because it's entirely out of left field and has very little to do with the adventure. Chapter 5 is and always will be the worst chapter in this nonsense, but 7 is real close. It's dull, overlong, stuffed with boring and meaningless exposition, and designed explicitly to waste the PCs' time with no real way to get around it unless they just give up on the adventure and go after Karl, which costs them nothing but coaching fees. You only get the bonus Fate Point if you fully engage and solve all the art puzzle boxes about Nagash being a God and blah blah, but fuck it. Our heroes would rather just not bother.

Now for the chapter that's mostly a cutscene, and then the extremely long dungeon crawl! Somehow this feels like they ran out of budget on the 3rd disc of an RPG that wasn't any good anyway.

Next Time: The Thousand Crowns Watch Some Cutscenes

The Gang Travels Kislev

posted by Night10194 Original SA post

Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 2e: Thousand Thrones

The Gang Travels Kislev

First, the customary 300 EXP an adventure for our protagonists has some significant effects. Shanna finishes Crime Lord and scampers directly into Master Thief. She can finally upgrade her Agi again! And by the end of the campaign she'll have maxed it at 89%. Ain't no catchin' Shanna Applebottom if she doesn't want to be caught. Oleg finishes Vampire Hunter and enters his true final form, right as they go after a Witch: He is a Witch Hunter now. Being a dwarf ranger, he keeps his stylish hood and resists the urge of the giant human hat. That's for elfs who go native like Liniel from Paths of the Damned. He also has 3 attacks. Sif doesn't have much else to do, and while she doesn't use her bow often she masters its use, getting to 70% BS. She also has Mighty Shot and Rapid Reload. She can put 3 arrows downrange in a flash better than most elves, and she mostly treats archery as a hobby. Champions are awesome at fighting. Johan maxes his WS at 57 (respectable) and grabs his own third attack. He'll always be the 'secondary' fighter compared to Oleg and Sif, but Johan's actually kind of a badass now. If he catches someone by surprise he can do some serious damage. Syphan grabs Wrestling, Flail, and uses a little house-rule of mine where Pit Fighter can take Street Fighter in place of Parrying Weapons. This is because Parrying Weapons are kind of sad outside of the Swordbreaker and because c'mon, it should be possible to learn to punch the shit out of people as a Pit Fighter. Syphan has now completed his transformation into a wizard-martial artist. Katarine maxes her WP and Int at 60 and 51 (her actual Heal test is now 81% base) and learns to use the sacred Longbow common to Rhyan and Taalite warrior-priests. She's still probably the worst fighter on the team, but she's not here for her combat abilities, she's here for her healing and support and social skills.

Rose just gets smarter. Rose is the smartest member of the party BY A SIGNIFICANT AMOUNT. The cute magical raccoon is the Speedwagon to Syphan's JoJo, dispensing constant narration and exposition. She gets treats in return, which she would find demeaning, but she really likes treats.

The book suggests 'stalling' the PCs with more red herrings if they detected that Chapter 7 was a red herring, or hitting them with extra combats to wound and slow them down. Schwalb, is that you? It is! I remember this horseshit from Forges! It also has a sidebar on what to do if the PCs have gotten sick of the campaign due to Chapter 7: The answer is to hit them with more random encounters until they get the hint and get back on that railroad, goddamnit. "This could be perceived as heavy handed." Gee, you don't think. On their way north, our heroes actually pass by the great Karak Kardin in the World's Edge Mountains. Oleg asks the team to stop a short time to recover, but also so he can leave word about everything that's happened with his people. This isn't his Hold, but he knows what a Runebearer can do, and the word will get out. All this fuckery about the Crusade and the vampires and all? The Thanes and Kings should probably know about it and as a Ranger it's his duty to report what happens in the surface world. Karak Kardin would be a cool place for a side adventure, since it's the location of the great Shrine of Grimnir and the sacred city of the slayer cult, who have kept the city from ever once falling. There's no suggestion to have an adventure there, but for our narrative purposes the team spends a few days there, with Oleg reporting on everything that's happened to some of the Thanes and the elf being made somewhat unwelcome (by which I mean forced to drink dwarven beer, which they expected to floor her, not quite realizing Syphan has the constitution of a somewhat sickly dwarf). This helps explain why they don't stay quite as hot on the tail of Karl. They wouldn't deny Oleg the chance to do his duty, and they deserve a decent beer and a short rest for once.

After a short and probably really interesting interlude with the dwarfs, they also pick up any last gear they need. Specifically, they've put Shanna in full plate. Dwarf-made plate. She has Sturdy. This has no penalties for her. Their tiny halfling thief is walking around covered in steel without making a sound, toting an automatic crossbow. This is good.

Moving on, there's a bunch of suggestions to once again put Terror in Talabheim in the middle of everything, or throw in other published adventures, but the heroes are beyond that now. While it would be hilarious to watch them curbstomp all the low-level material in Plundered Vaults, I'll be covering that after this. There's a lot of Gossip tests to uncover rumors about where the Crusade went, but A: The team is very good at Gossip and can do this easily and B: We know where it's going. They're heading into Kislev, right as late fall is setting in. Kislev gets no real coverage and is described as a 'rude and thoroughly uncivilized land'. We've read Realm of the Ice Queen and in fact know Kislev is a rad place where you can have the saber fight from The Deluge get interrupted by hellvikings. It getting absolutely no real screen time or flavor in this adventure is both par for the course (look how dull Altdorf was) and a shame. Our heroes draw near to the town of Zhidovsk, a town they cannot do anything to help and that will be extremely dead by the end of this adventure, and this is where the actual adventure kicks in.

The heroes first come across a small band of refugees, Crusaders who have since left the crazy, doomed Crusade and who are fleeing through the snow for...anything, really. They're pursued by a Witch Hunter who believes (correctly) one of the refugees is a mutant, so he intends to burn the entire band alive. The four refugees are described as wicked and low-character men who don't really have any purpose in the story besides to tell the PCs they're close to their target and for Ham the mutant to have a belly button that shits maggots. Hi, Schwalb. The refugees are 'vicious men' who will 'betray and murder the PCs at the first opportunity' if the heroes let them come along or try to help the starving, mostly unarmed and helpless people. I'd like to see them fucking try; Syphan could handle all 4 of them unarmed. Sif could do it unarmed and unarmored. Them turning on the PCs is considered a serious threat, somehow, despite them being ragged 1st tiers with no real weaponry or gear. It's more of the general 'trying to help anyone will just get you slapped' stuff. Similarly, if the PCs abandon them, make a -20 Int test for their leader Frank. If he succeeds, he realizes the PCs were in the Crusade and manages to convince the Hunter to go after them as revenge.

Phineas Vanderhoff is also treated like a super terrifying opponent. He's another dick Hunter who has nothing to do with the Cult of Sigmar; he's a freelance bounty hunter who has found that in his line of work, most of the most valuable bounties are mutants and cultists. So he's gotten into Witch Hunting, dresses like one, and claims to be one to terrify quarries into surrendering. Plus, he likes the burning and the killing and the torturing and this gives him the excuse. Herr Vanderhoff won't be much of a loss for the world once he gets on the wrong end of The Thousand Crowns in a few pages. He's accompanied by 4 minor brutes about on par with the Lahmian thugs from earlier in the campaign, just worse equipped. Even if they were 'only' at 2500 EXP or so, the party could definitely handle Phineas and his minions. It's also possible for the heroes to encounter the Hunter first and get recruited to be his brutes (his brutes are dead from a Beastman battle if they run into him first) with him promising pay to run down the refugees. Phineas is treated as a serious fight, and I suppose he is; he's WS 62, has another of those Superior Swords that's +10% WS, has full plate, etc. But the team is 3rd tier. When he tells them he intends to burn everyone behind them, they tell him to fuck off and find some real witches instead of hunting down starving refugess. Sif implies he's too much of a coward to fight anything that can fight back and that's why he's hell for leather on going after refugees. He calls her a mutant, saying she is a 'woman of uncommon and unnatural size', accuses Syphan of being a witch (actually correct, sort of), and swears that Katarine must be touched by Slaanesh. Things degenerate quickly. Soon enough, Phineas Vanderoff's career has come to an end at the hands of a Norsewoman's morning star and his brutes are dead or running. They take his nice sword as a trophy to give to Katarine.

Fighting him is treated as a very stupid thing, but think about it; it's a very winnable fight where the enemy has amazing gear you can take. Johan also takes the man's excellent coat. A long, black coat with a red Cathayan silk lining? Stylish as heck, and it's his color.

Next, the heroes encounter the dreaded Black Ice, a terrible wolf-like daemon that has held the entire town of Zhidovsk in his thrall. This demon is used to threaten the town into sacrificing a girl to the Black Witch every generation or so, so she can have a semblance of a body while she's trapped in her eternal mud puddle/hellwomb. It's meant to be a terrifying encounter, though it will not immediately attack and in fact can lead the PCs to Zhidovsk or even all the way to the Black Witch if they're mounted and chase it on horseback. Yes, you can skip all of Chapter 8 if you have horses and pursue the demon. No, this doesn't change anything about the strict time limit on Chapter 9; it's assumed that you not wasting a week in Zhidovsk just means things move faster. However, as soon as they see a Demon (and make their Terror tests), Syphan casts Banishment. She's ahead of it in the initiative order, after all. It also only has a 38 WP to her 70. She obliterates it on the WP vs. WP test, and chains of light wrap around the beast and drag it back to hell with a confused wurfle. Even if she hadn't done this, Black Ice is absolutely pathetic; he's a 1 attack, SB 4, TB 4 WS 51 W 17 unit whose only real trick is an ice breath he can use once per 4 rounds to do Damage 4 Ignores Armor in a cone. They'd have shot him to death before he could escape if Syphan hadn't expelled him back to hell instantly and destroyed him.

Next up comes our evil temptress hag who mind controls men to make them her sex slaves. Hooray! It's bingo at last! She picks out an 'attractive human male' (Johan) to lead into her shack and mind control, which takes a WP-10 to resist. Johan has a 71% WP and Resistant to Magic. When Shabrak the Hag tries to grab him, he just kind of looks at her like 'really'? She's described in loving detail as an ugly old woman with a blue tongue who smells like shit, and the hero she mind controls is told to do everything he can to be close to and protect her and tell the party to come to her house with him. She failed to do this. If they follow, she serves them a lovely dinner, which is all an illusion (it's all muddy, filthy shit-water and grubs) and she spends the whole time trying to make out with the controlled PC, who can't resist. Oh boy. Fun times. If the PCs realize she's some kind of black-magic using witch (maybe even suspecting she's The Black Witch) and fight her, it's described as a fool's errand...despite the fact that she's an unsupported Mag 2 Wizard who can't do anything if you aren't a male human for her to intoxicate. PCs taken by Shabrak's spell can only be snapped out of it by killing her or by Charm/Intimidate-10 by their allies. The heroes realize this is a crazy mind control witch because Syphan casts her anti-illusion spell as soon as they reach her hut. She is pissed off at elf wizard and attacks, and gets the one weakness of all wizards: A volley of ranged fire from Sif, Syphan's magic, Shanna and Oleg's crossbows, etc and just kinda drops in an instant. Unsupported wizards with no mooks and Mag 2 are not bosses, WHFRP! They have never been boss fights, they will never BE boss fights!

Also, you know, sexual assault humiliation filth witch feels like some further Magical Realm shit after the 'PCs gotta hack through that sphincter, get really covered in all that filth that then maybe gives them filth-pox that explode in shit to humiliate them' in Chapter 5.

There's also a fight with a Chaos Troll in some standing leyline stones, but eh. Nothing interesting happens and they can handle a lone Chaos Troll easily. None of these encounters are hard (well, Phineas can be pretty dangerous, but you also don't really have to fight him) but they're all treated as terrifying and near impossible. Meanwhile earlier you were meant to fight 12 well trained warriors and a fucking vampire multiple adventures back and with far fewer character resources. I genuinely don't get what's with Schwalb's sense of balance or encounter design. He seems to think fights balance out based on how icky the enemy is in description, and like all Hams writers massively overvalues just putting 'demon' or 'wizard' on something. Meanwhile he's happy to drown the heroes in 'mundane' enemies who will kick their asses. And man does his work love Save or Dies and Mutation tests; that's still ahead in Chapter 9.

They also encounter a Strigany caravan driving a Strigoi vampire to soccer practice (I mean, the Womb of the Black Witch). The PCs join up with them for the last leg of the journey because why not, and the Strigany tell them NOT to look inside the wagon where they hear unfortunate chewing sounds at all hours. If they look in the wagon, they see 'two once beautiful and alluring maidens' who were forced to gorge on human flesh until they turned into hideous ghouls, accompanying a giant, muscular mutated Strigoi woman. Hmm. More 'once beautiful' women forced into mutating into hideous monsters? Been awhile. If they flee, the vamp doesn't pursue. If they fight, the Coachmen draw pistols, the vamp herself attacks, and the ghouls join in. The vamp is pretty weak for a vamp (only a little stronger than the mook Strigoi back in Chapter 2) and unarmored. She is also not vulnerable to sunlight, another sign of a loser vampire who can't handle having classical weaknesses because the author can't be bothered to account for them. Our team naturally peeks in the wagon because hideous chewing noises, sighs at the sight inside, draws weapons, and soon there's a pile of ash, two dead ghouls, and two surrendering coachmen.

The book also expects players will somehow get split up by these encounters, as some flee and some try to fight, and rubs its hands together and tells the GM to 'resist butchering them for now' and just harass them to Zhidovsk. This whole section is just...weird. It assumes players are (despite being third tier) very stupid, very weak, and very, very cowardly. After all this random violence, and with a heavy snowfall starting around them, the heroes finally make it to Zhidovsk. They've been traveling through the Oblast for weeks, and the possibility of something fresh to eat and an actual bed (and the need to gather information) get them to go along with the hooks and go to the village. They find the town is stuffed with vampires' Black Coaches as the vampires arrive to argue about who should get to go up into the mountains and get tricked and murdered by the Witch, as well as ragged remnants of the Crusade of the Child that slowly stream into town. It's also in the middle of preparing a festival; one which will sacrifice a young maiden named Anya, something that has gotten the local Shallyan missionary into suicidal depression and made her try to send word to the Winged Lancers for help. This will do nothing, and soon she'll kill herself in graphic detail while the Winged Lancers just murder everyone in town. Oh, did I spoil the ending? I did, because there's nothing you can do about any of it, and skipping Zhidovsk would've lost nothing of value. This is basically all going to be a lightly interactive cutscene with a lot of mean-spirited violence and gleeful descriptions of people dying in pain.

I think it's the mean-spirited nature of it all that annoys me so much. If PCs can't do anything about anything, you rule out PCs being motivated for too long by anything but material gain. Yet you also expect PCs will take on missions like this that promise no pay for amazing danger. You can't have that cake and eat it. It'd be one thing if PCs were cynical mercenaries regularly strung along by promises of The Big Score that they never really seem to get. There isn't even a promise of such things here. I've tried to write the Thousand Crowns engaging in good faith with the adventure, struggling to come up with reasons to keep going that fit their characters. Really, the only motive that seems to stick around in this adventure is 'winning the adventure'. Your characters keep going because the GM won't let you do anything else and you're trying to win. Which is kind of shitty. The Thousand Crowns themselves are just trying to get to Karl and get him themselves, so they can rescue him from this bullshit and maybe try to find a way to teach him to control his powers so this Crusade insanity doesn't kill anyone else. Yes, PCs save the world from the Black Witch in the good ending, but up until recently they didn't even know there was a Black Witch, and they still might not know depending on what they did with the Seer. Her total lack of presence in the plot precludes her having a character or being a motivating factor.

Similarly, the constant violence is very...assumed. Take the insane guy back in the Nurglite temple. It's just assumed you murder him and move on if you're smart. There's no sympathy for victims, no ability to mourn, no sense any of the constant suffering is any kind of tragedy. It's just all treated as gleeful splatterhouse violence. Which also limits its ability to have any impact, and would also hurt the players' ability to actually roleplay. Once players stop trying to help anyone, stop engaging with anything because learning only hurts them and swinging away is the best solution, and just kinda trudge to the end, who is having fun? What sorts of interesting encounters can you use at that point? It's fitting this will all end with a 75 room dungeon crawl, because that's the only kind of 'encounter' it's been conditioning players towards engaging with at all this whole time.

FUN TIMES.

Next Time: Cutscene Village

Chapter Content Warning The Second

posted by Night10194 Original SA post

Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 2e: Thousand Thrones

Chapter Content Warning The Second

Hey, guess who's coming back? It wasn't just Sexual Assault Filth Witch, but our more general old friend Sexual Menace As A Plot Device. So the general outline of what happens in the village is that Tobias's Chaos Organ has become a big sickness spreading filthmonster and gotten into the village well, where it will kill most of the remaining Crusaders and poison the town, so they'll try to give up a girl to the Witch to stop her. She'll instead be stolen by a fat, evil old man who covets her for a captive bride. The first thing that happens in the village is the PCs learning that an evil dog has been seen around, and maybe it's the terrible BLACK ICE! Their explanations that they killed the shit out of Black Ice in a single round won't be believed by anyone, because the sickness is a sure sign the real Black Ice is around even though the dog is just a normal dog with bits glued to it by the fat evil merchant to induce another sacrifice so he can kidnap a bride for himself.

I really didn't miss Sexual Menace as a Plot Device. It was nice not having it around.

Vampire search parties are also out looking for Karl, and the PCs can easily learn Karl headed into the mountains, to places people are not supposed to go. However, with rapidly spreading sickness in the village, the Thousand Crowns wonder if maybe that Ruprecht asshole whose clock they still haven't punched is around. A simple Heal test tells Katarine that the talk about the water supply 'tasting bad' also means there's something nasty down there. Because an elf can be lowered into the well easily, Syphan volunteers to go set whatever it is on fire. This leads to a one-on-one fight between Syphan and the Chaos Organ. There is no real anticipation of what happens if they do this; the Organ is always supposed to rise dramatically on day three and cause the festival of the sacrifice to go crazy and lots of people to die, even though there's mechanics that tell the PCs the thing is in the water. It's actually a tough fight for a lone Syphan; it isn't Demonic, so she can't just Banish it. But after dodging and parrying a moment while she summons her claws and her Radiant Sentinel, the team hears a bunch of magical chanting from the well and then a lot of loud splattering sounds, then sees an awful lot of fire as she makes damn sure she burns every scrap of it with Fireballs to purify the water. She climbs back out a minute later, cheerfully announcing 'Job's done'.

The PCs can talk to the surviving Crusaders, but this mostly gets them useless information and Toughness tests against...can you guess? What's the ONLY MOTHERFUCKING disease in this? NEIGLISH. FUCKING. ROT. Lesser diseases too, but I remember the Core Book describes Neiglish Rot as an exceedingly rare disease that should be used sparingly.

The heroes also stop in the local store, both because Piotr Tormorov seems really intent on sacrificing someone to She Who Must Not Be Mentioned and because they figure the general goods store is a good place to go. Piotr's ugliness is described in great detail, and he's offering great prices because he plans to kidnap Anya and run for Praag so everything must go. Since he's a major part of the town council, too, they figure they'll tell him they killed Black Ice and the Chaos Organ that was causing everything. He doesn't listen, because again, his whole plan is to use this as an excuse to sexually menace a beautiful girl and make her his captive bride. They've also Gossiped around and found out Piotr often had designs on Anya already.

Because it will change nothing, the heroes have, by now, figured out that this is all bullshit because it's transparently bullshit. They already killed the demon and the thing causing the sickness, after all. And Katarine is really familiar with people like Piotr. She asks him if he understand that everything points to him being a cultist who has set up a false sacrifice by spreading plague in the village. That they are experienced Witch Hunters (in a way, this is true) who can make that charge stick with the council. They advise him to tell the Council he set the dog up, and maybe they'll drop the plague charge. Maybe. He still might come out of this without seeing the pyre. The terrified man promises to do so, and Sif stays behind with Oleg (he is the Witch Hunter, after all) to make absolutely sure he does while the others visit the Shallyan shrine.

Hanna the Shallyan is a woman who has been losing her faith ever since she heard about what the Storm did to her home town of Wolfenburg in Ostland. She is yet another person who had good intentions for the world and wanted to help people, so naturally it's beaten her down. She was also creeped on intensely by Piotr, but he 'could not stand all her talk of mercy' and decided he'd sexually menace Anya instead. She's filthy and always drunk now, planning to kill herself, because she's so upset that she's failing the girl Anya. Anya is her friend and comes to cry on the Shallyan's shoulder about how her family might make her marry Piotr, you see. Because our heroes are actual heroes and have already dealt with the plague beast, they tell her about it. And tell her about Piotr's plans. Katarine stays with the Shallyan to keep her company and try to help her not do anything to hurt herself while the others go to keep gathering information. Hannah has already sent her note to the Winged Lancers, but maybe the team can do something about it after she confesses that fact to Katarine. Especially as they'll keep her from killing herself in despair.

This leads them to Olav, the Purveyor of Destiny. Olav is an ex-Kossar who has been trying to stop the sacrifices, and who has gone insane in the process. He thinks it's foretold that great heroes, champions, will come to save the village from the Black Witch. This is totally talk Syphan is super interested in, and Olav is absolutely sure Magic Elf Martial Artist is one of those roles that's positively dripping with destiny. Rose thinks this is silly, Syphan doesn't listen. The old man presents the heroes with information on exactly where to find the Witch, since they're obviously the destined champions who will save Anya and stop the sacrifices. They're into killing evil Chaos monsters, even if this Witch doesn't seem to have much to do with them, and who knows? Maybe she's next on the long line of people trying to kidnap Karl. He's been searching the mountains about where Olav says the Witch is, according to rumors. Might as well take the horror out and stop it claiming sacrifices and terrorizing the town. He will always have worthless but meaningful items for each PC, as if destiny put them there; the GM is allowed to say carrying one of the destined items actually does give you an extra Fortune point, or make them powerless. In Syphan's case, he presents her with a pair of rough, fingerless leather fighting gloves, which she recognizes as being made from the hide of the ferocious Naggarond War Moose. THIS IS CLEARLY DESTINY. He even has a new little ushanka for Rose to replace her wizard hat with, in case she's cold. She grudgingly accepts, still protesting this is silly.

Meanwhile Johan meets a Von Carstein in the local bar. Valin Von Carstein isn't interested in eating anyone, and thinks all this stuff is nonsense. He was dragged up here by his family and is sulking like a teen brought along on a family vacation he thinks is bullshit. Johan recognizes a valuable source when he sees one, and gets to chatting up the personable vamp. Johan is able to impress the man, who tells him at length about the five Bloodlines and what they're doing here. If a PC impresses Valin, he's meant to try to visit later and turn them into a vampire (with or without their permission) because he thinks they're cool and all cool people should be Von Carsteins. Johan won't be anywhere nearby for that, and if he was, Valin would find he was walking into more than he bargained for in that matter. Valin is pretty suspicious of the fact that the vamps have all been called here; he knows Karl didn't do it, and he doesn't think any of the locals would send word. He suspects the Witch, making him the smartest vampire since Lord d'Trois. Naturally he talks of the Lahmians as 'whores', because we're still keeping track of Bingo. He also mentions the Lahmians might have gotten some mortals to watch over the boy back in Marienburg; the last possible hint of any involvement of Selena.

Finally, Shanna checks out the vampire camp. She can do this safely both because she's able to sneak well, and halflings taste terrible. Because I'm writing up my own stuff anyway, and it would make sense given Valin mentions it, Shanna is surprised to find their original employer Selena among the camp. Confronting her about the matter, Shanna figures since she paid on time and generally didn't fuck with the group, it would only be professional to warn her that it looks extremely like she's walking into a very stupid trap by Chaos. The heroes are still operating under the assumption Ruprecht is their main villain (Maybe this Witch is his minion) so Shanna explains about him, the necklace, etc. Sofia and Theodora didn't share any of that with Selena, so she listens to the halfling, thanks her for her 'loyalty' and tells her if the team ever needs work in Marienburg she'll be around, hands her a small chest of the party's back-pay, and decides to get the hell out of dodge. Sure, Shanna just saved a vampiress, but a boss who pays on time is worth the risk.

Normally, there's really nothing to do in the vampire camp. It's just a good place to get killed. Players can 'try to sow dissent', especially if Valin is their ally, but given how little the vampires do in Chapter 9 or the conclusion of Chapter 8, there's no reason. There's up to 20 danged vamps here (d5-1 of each Line) and a Blood Dragon is one of the few things that can beat Sif in a straight fight still (she might win, but Blademaster reducing her attacks by 1 hurts). Shanna's little sub adventure is there, like all my writeup for this chapter, to give an actual reason to be there.

Normally, none of what the PCs do matters. Things proceed apace, the sacrifice will go ahead, the Organ will emerge from the well to eat many of the children at the ceremony, the Black Ice shows up to menace the town for having Scooby Dooed a false Black Ice, Hannah kills herself (but also fails to kill herself. For some reason they want to give you the detail that she tried to hang herself, failed, fell, broke her leg, and was wailing piteously for help while she bled out in agony and no-one heard. Which is weird. This is what I mean when I say this shit is just mean-spirited), then 30 high level Winged Lancers show up and kill everyone in the village while the PCs flee. Now, the Winged Lancers have told themselves they'll do this even if the village looks fine, since it's obviously subtly corrupted, and they're too many and too powerful to fight off, so in the 'normal' adventure, even if the PCs stopped the organ or whatever the Lancers still kill everyone (and the PCs if they try to stop them) rendering everything worthless. Also it seems Piotr pretty much always gets away with Anya OR she gets killed by Black Ice normally. Since none of this matters to the overall outcome of the adventure?

In our version, there is no Festival; they've unmasked Piotr and he's ridden out of town on a rail for his crimes in trying to get a poor peasant girl killed/sacrificed on the chance he could kidnap her. With no festival happening, and with the Chaos Organ dead, and most importantly with Hannah alive, she goes out with the team to meet the Winged Lancers to explain what's happened. The Lancers settle for blaming the foreigners, and set out to drive off the vampires and Crusaders from the town; that might go badly, or most of the Vamps might decide not to fuck around with a large rota of extremely well armed and armored troops who are attacking them in daylight and fuck off. They also saved Anya the peasant girl and helped Hannah through her mental health crisis, because they have a Priestess of Rhya who is supposed to do exactly that kind of work. Note it doesn't change anything about the plot to have written all this stuff with the heroes engaging with the plot and making a difference. They still had adventures and gathered information exactly as Zhidovsk is supposed to get them to within the broader plot. They're still headed off for the Womb of the Black Witch for the final dungeon crawl, to save Karl, kill this thing, and hopefully meet Ruprecht and kill what they think is the mastermind behind all this bullshit because the Witch must just be some last minute new minion for the established villain.

Which version sounds more likely to get players to engage? The one where their actions matter, or the one where after doing whatever in the town for a bit a mass of powerful NPCs butcher everyone with no recourse and send them fleeing into the woods, nothing they do mattering YET AGAIN? I write this stuff partly for my amusement but also because I think it provides a good contrast; in one version, the characters actually get to play their characters, do their things, have amusing or interesting encounters, and affect the plot. In the other, this whole town is a pointless cutscene about misery and death.

And so Chapter 8 comes to a close. Now, the heroes will face the final bullshit in the Hellwomb I promised you so long ago. Get ready for the exciting (?) conclusions of Robert J. Schwalb's Wild Ride as they face Chapter 9, The Womb of the Black Witch.

Next Time: The Final Goop Dungeon

It Wishes It Was The Darkest Dungeon

posted by Night10194 Original SA post

Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 2e: Thousand Thrones

It Wishes It Was The Darkest Dungeon

The final dungeon is one of the worst parts of this campaign. It isn't quite as bad as Chapter 5 overall, but this should be the big climax. In Ashes of Middenheim, the Knight Fight was off in balance but the players confronting Leibnitz has actual weight because they know who he is and he has been FUCKING THEM for the last several sessions. Actually getting to lay hands on the prick has some actual catharsis. The Black Witch, by contrast? What do we know about her? She lived in Praag, but it got taken over by Chaos and so her switch got flipped to Chaos Champion, then she got her head caved in with a hammer, crawled off into the mountains, and died. Now she haunts the mountains and plots to return. What does that tell us about her? What's she want? Why does she want it? Aside from 'she is about to destroy the world with a swarm of hellspiders and powers taken from eating a magic child' (and the players don't know about the hell spiders) the PCs have no real stakes in fighting her. For our narrative, they actually think she's another minion of Ruprecht, because he's the only villain they actually know about and he seemed to be orchestrating the whole Chaos side of the plot.

Ruprecht IS actually here. He's searching for Karl to try to steal him back and finish his plan, annoyed Tobias fucked everything up. He's no friend of the Witch but trying to play them off against one another just gets the players killed so that detail is irrelevant. He'll just be a minor boss fight later. Also, despite being a big dick full scale finished all the careers Chaos Sorcerer Lord, he's lacking something critical to prevent him being killed by the true enemy of all Warhammer Wizards (being shot to death on round 1): He somehow doesn't actually have a suit of Chaos Armor. You know, the incredible divine full plate that lets a Chaos Sorcerer still use magic unhindered while being AV 5. One of the biggest mechanical advantages they can have that can make them into final boss types. He's missing it. He tries to ally with the PCs when he meets them; they have to attack him to start the fight right away. If they don't work with him, or if they do, he'll try to murder them when they're busy with something else, using them to clear part of the dungeon for him. Best to just shoot the fat fuck when you find him. Plus, our heroes still think he's the main villain, so when they find him, they're going to try to waste him.

He does know the Armor spell and will start off a fight casting it, and he does have 4 minor demons backing him up (though Plaguebearers are pretty meh minor demons, with their only real threat being the disease checks you make after the fight if they wound you at all) but I learned the hard way with Alakreiza the Sunderer (a Sorcerer Lord in one of my games): Never, ever rely entirely on 'they can cast Armor' because when they lose Initiative, shit happens. Ruprecht is slower than the PCs. Especially Syphan, who can hit him 3 times for Damage 4 with Fireball. It is extremely likely that when they encounter Ruprecht Hahn, the team just fills him with arrows, fireballs, and bolts and he drops immediately, then they clean up his buddies.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. This update is about setting up the Hellwomb and its absolute bullshit little cheap shot special rules. First, our heroes have their final bookkeeping. Shanna maxes her Agi at 89. Oleg maxes his WS to 76. Katarine picks up Charm+20, Dodge Blow +10, and +5 WS. Johan maxes his Agility to 72 and buys Concealment+10. Syphan finishes Pit Fighter and goes into Veteran in time to buy +10 Dodge. Sif learns Two Handed and adds a Halberd to her huge array of weaponry, and is almost done with Champion. Rose maxes her Int. She is now the smartest raccoon in the universe. They are as prepared for the last struggle as they can be.

The problem is the last struggle revolves around having a shitload of Toughness. Every single hour you spend in the final dungeon (and you have a 5 hour time limit or the Witch kills Karl and starts birthing thousands of spiders) you test Toughness or mutate (the book is eager to point out you should have Tome of Corruption to make mutation interesting). Any time the PCs take a single Wound while in here, they ALSO check for Mutation. Any wounding hit. ANY. Any time they use a healing draught or otherwise drink or eat anything (so if a player says they need a moment to take a drink for flavor, they get smacked) they test for Mutation. Also, all Casting Rolls (this includes your enemies) get 2 extra dice that ONLY count for miscasts. So Syphan can't really use her magic easily the entire final dungeon. Neither can Katarine. This also leads to the hilarious possibility that someone like Ruprecht pulls out his Dark Magic Talent, 5 Casting Dice (He's got Malign Sorcerer so he's Mag 5), and rolling 8 dice, completely turbofucks himself and explodes. Now I tell you, players do find it hilarious when that happens; I once had a Tzeentch Prince try to use Dispel Mortal on a PC, fail (spell went off, character saved against the instant-kill), and roll a 4 dice miscast where he accidentally banished himself instead of the knight he was trying to destroy. So it might be hilarious if that happens to Ruprecht or the Black Witch. But it still really sucks for anyone who put a ton of PC resources into being a wizard or priest to be unable to use magic much in the final dungeon.

As you might imagine, there's a lot of combat in the final dungeon. Potentially less if the PCs try to avoid as much as possible (which they should), but there will be fights. Every fight having taking a wound potentially be a save or die for a 75 room dungeon crawl is a fucking terrible idea.

If that wasn't enough, you also roll for 'random events' every d10x10 minutes, 'when you get bored', or if any combat takes more then 3 turns. These range from the filthy organic dungeon shitting on a PC to debuff them (oh boy) to the floor trying to dissolve their feet and debuffing movement until it's healed, to extra mutation tests for everyone, to the walls vomiting on a PC to make them vomit everywhere, to being randomly teleported and separated, to everyone just taking damage (which if it causes Wounds, also causes Mutation tests!). You will probably be able to complete this dungeon. You will almost certainly be heavily mutated by the end and there's effectively nothing you can do about it expect hope to get lucky and reserve all your Fortune for rerolling the Mutation tests.

Your goal in the dungeon is to get 3 keys and break into the final area to confront the Witch before she kills Karl and eats the 5 idiot vampires she's lured to herself. You have 5 hours. You do not have an indicator there is a strict time limit. There are also false keys, and the main hint they're false is that they're aligned to a Chaos God instead of Undivided and none of the False Keys are guarded. If you use a false key on the final door, guess what. Mutation. Can't save against that one, either. Anyone carrying multiple false keys also has to check against you guessed it mutation. Anyone carrying a false key out of the dungeon makes a Tough-10 or Mutate. Schwalb loves mutation as much as he loves shit.

To manage the time, you're meant to have a timer on hand. You should time the players in real time as they go through the dungeon, stopping the clock for combat encounters since they take longer. So players don't just have 5 in-game hours, they have 5 real-time hours for this 75 room dungeon crawl. Any time spent roleplaying, talking, or thinking? Penalty. Shut up and get to work. There are also triggered events where a magic demon tries to possess a PC invisibly when they get the first key, or two Random Events happen when they get the 2nd, and Ruprecht appears when they get the third. Meanwhile, at each hour, stuff happens. The vampires slowly find the inner sanctum, Karl is possessed (that happens at 4 hours to go, so PCs probably won't prevent it, but they don't need to; they have another way out of that when they confront the Witch). Ruprecht starts finding free keys if you take too long, which can get you the keys if you kill him and take them. At 0 hours, the players lose the campaign. This is not a very good way to run a dungeon, but then this is a really bad dungeon.

Look, I don't really like dungeon crawls at the best of times. I have a poor spatial sense and sense of direction, and it makes constructing dungeons in the classic way a nightmare for me as a GM. But I also just find them dull. Crawling through a large mostly plotless area and making maps just isn't very interesting to me. Getting all 3 keys isn't a matter of solving a maze faster; the PCs will have to go through the majority of the dungeon's encounters to do that anyway and will also have to take them to and unlock the final encounter room anyway. There aren't a lot of environmental hints to get the heroes the keys as they go, so they mostly just stumble along, facing all kinds of monsters and environmental traps (like usual, don't touch anything) until they meet the mandatory encounters (The Mother, Maiden and Crone) guarding the keys. Encounter design varies wildly. Sometimes it's vampires or tons of Chaos champion type foes. Sometimes it's a single Daemonette who is somehow treated as a threat.

I debated how much detail to go into with the dungeon, but you know, let's just highlight some of the sorts of encounters you have and the mandatory ones. The first Mandatory Encounter is The Mother, a young woman sacrificed to the Witch ages ago. She is held to the walls by tongues and begs the PCs to kill her. If they do, they get the key and she comes back to life later. There's also a key held in mucus that is a false key, there for players who aren't eager to murder tied up women. Our heroes realize the key is false, and Syphan's magical sense (while a huge risk since it can cause Insanity here, or could if Insanity wasn't an optional rule, haha, suckers!) confirms this whole thing is a trick. They're forced to stab the helpless woman to make her bleed the key because there's nothing else you can do.

In the Gallery of War, they encounter to huge Warbands fighting one another to the death. Khornates and Tzeentch worshipers have found this place, and they slowly diminish in number as the hours pass until they kill one another entirely. Anyone who enters the fighting 'will almost certainly die, but have fun'. This is the majority of encounters in here: Just don't touch anything, don't bite on any hooks, and you can probably get through with minimum trouble. The less you play the game, the better this section goes; you'll only hit a few unavoidable traps. Perception is also critical to spotting and avoiding most traps throughout the dungeon. A party that just tries to move as fast as possible and engage with nothing has the best chance.

I should also note the writing for all the traps is all 'oh, and the PCs who touch it get to suffer and man isn't it fun that we the GMs get to spring this on them?' when again, a smart party has already learned not to play. Don't try to take items, don't try to do anything in the dungeon, just...walk away from everything you can and hope you roll well on Mutation.

The Maiden is an insane beautiful woman who screams in agony if you try to take her out of her room, because of course. If they actually look at her face, it's been eaten out by maggots. Spooky. All you have to do here is break her mirror, and it turns into the second key. There's nothing really to these encounters so far, they're just trying to be scary and show off some more brutalized women.

One of the other random encounters? It's Father Johannes! He's not actually dead. Johannes has been captured after following Karl down here, trying to help. The PCs can free him, and because they've tried to save Karl at every turn, he tells them Karl is a puppet of Chaos and he was wrong, and they must kill the boy. If they'd tried to kill the boy, Johannes would tell them he was Sigmar and they must save him. It shifts based on what you've done. There's no actually saving Johannes; whatever you do, he'll be eaten alive by mutant monsters in a bit unless you actually drag him with you the whole dungeon and somehow keep the fat man alive. The heroes being heroes, they still try to leave him in one of the designated safe rooms after helping him down from where he's being tortured. He'll still die, but they did what they could.

The final mandatory encounter is the Crone. She's tied up with spider webs and it takes immense strength to reach her. Trying to burn the webs will kill her and the key, but she'll be raised in a few minutes so you can try again. Sif is insanely strong. Sif pushes her way to the last imprisoned woman, who is still sane enough to hope the PCs killing the Witch will save her. The Crone tells Sif 'Thrust her bones into the blackness to kill her and save us all!', which is actually the easiest way to kill the Witch eventually. So thanks, Crone. All 3 women will die horribly when the Witch does, naturally. The heroes have all 3 keys and have struggled through enough bullshit. They have one last important encounter before Ruprecht, then the climax.

For the other rooms, just imagine an endless procession of 'if you touch anything or fail per, bad things happen.' and mostly avoidable or minor combat encounters.

Next Time: The Hell Spiders, Ruprecht Hahn, and the End of a Thousand Thrones.

The Giant Space Witch From Nowhere

posted by Night10194 Original SA post

Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 2e: Thousand Thrones

The Giant Space Witch From Nowhere



This is basically what my group had to decide on for when they're up in the Chaos Wastes in our current game, because otherwise it's much too easy to just render a character unplayable just because of the location of the campaign.

Yeah, I know, I'm going at a crazy pace but goddamnit it's time to finish this fight. First, the heroes finally encounter the Witch's actual plan: The Abomination Spiders. There's a huge teaming nursery of eggs. If they fuck with them in any way, the spiders start hatching and the dungeon gets flooded with extra combat encounters with fairly weak but annoying poisonous giant spiders. Remember any wounds cause Mutation so you want to avoid fights. This is the only way to discover her plan to make a huge self-sustaining army of mutant hellspiders. If you've learned Schwalb by now, though, you know not to touch anything or engage with anything or try to learn more about the plot than the minimum you need. Letting the spiders out doesn't just cause trouble for you, it also causes their army to plague all of Kislev and possibly the Empire, so even if you kill the Witch you probably fucked it. Because you didn't learn lesson 1: DO NOT ENGAGE.

Our heroes leave this, and move on. Passing by the huge chamber of mutants where you can fight 329 mutants if you want (they don't attack if you don't). They pass by a swirling gate directly into the Realm of Chaos; this is how you destroy the Witch's remains and exterminate her forever if you're too late and Karl has been eaten (you could also fight her, but this is considered impossible). It causes shitloads of mutations to any character who gets close enough to toss the remains, which you find in the final battle room you needed the 3 boss keys for. Shanna can get close safely; she's a halfling. No mutation can touch her. After those last few details, they come face to face with the man they think is the mastermind, Ruprecht Hahn. He's a huge, fat slug-faced monster, mutated beyond all belief and bearing multiple magic items of Nurgle. He tries to tell them he needs their help, that they have to destroy the Witch before her spiders kill everything and leave nothing to be sick. He's also swearing at how all his magic can't seem to break the seal on the doors until he sees the heroes' keys.

They have a few minutes of back and forth; they'd better. They accuse him of causing all of this. The Crusade is his fault. Karl's constant kidnappings are his fault. The shitty dungeon in Villa Hahn is his fault. He tries to tell them it was all the Witch, and he's just trying to stop her (He's trying to get Karl and continue his plan). Finally, he tells them to hand over the keys or face the joyful wrath of Nurgle, and to be invited to the festering cauldron of disease. In return, they draw their weapons and open fire. Before he or his demon allies can act, he takes 3 arrows from Sif, 2 bolts from Oleg, 2 bolts from Shanna, an aimed shot from Katarine's longbow, and despite the risk, Syphan uses a Power Stone they found earlier in the dungeon (it's a treasure item that lets you roll +2 casting dice) to cast the AoE Banishment spell, thinking this is their main villain. Miraculously, she only gets a minor miscast and causes all the non-existent plants within a few meters to die. Her spell also instantly vaporizes all 4 demons. He may be TB 6, but he's not able to handle 8 hits at once with no armor. As the projectiles bury themselves in his flesh, one of Oleg's is deep enough to be a fury and punches out his throat, killing the dark wizard. The team nods grimly as they watch him gurgle and fall, and Sif asks why Syphan never did the crazy giant pillar of demon obliterating light before as Rose tries to explain what a Power Stone is.

They've taken out the mastermind. Time to get into the lockup, face this 'Witch' minion of his, waste her too, get Karl, and get the fuck out of here! The team has no idea they're going into the actual final boss.

There's a short chamber of exposition because they forgot they didn't really introduce the main villain, showing the heroes images of her life and her joy at being a Champion of Chaos. By the time they push through it, the five Vampires (Sofia (should be Theodora, but they know Sofia better), Wilhelm, and...uh...identical replacements for the 2 they killed and Lydia, the one they never met.) are locked in Karl's gaze, unable to do anything. A black aura surrounds the boy, trying to possess the weeping and terrified child as the Black Witch's essence tries to force its way into him and turn him into a vessel she can drink the vampires with. The heroes realize this is the moment all this BS was leading up to.

Normally, the ways to defeat the Witch are simple. Destroy one of the vampires she needs (leads to a fight with all 5 vampires, which probably kills the PCs, though honestly this team could possibly win that) to foil the ritual. Try to kill Karl (the evergreen option) which causes the vampires to try to protect him, but if he's killed and the PCs fight through his aura, they win. Though the Witch doesn't die. The vamps will also stop attacking and leave. They can fight the Witch if they were too late and she's manifested as a big sexy murder lady by eating Karl, but 'she will almost certainly destroy them' since she has a tuned up version of Karl's aura and very high stats (all her stats are 88, plus 32 Wounds, 3 attacks, 5 Mag, immunity to stun/poison, regeneration of 1 point per turn, and a 5 point deflection AV aura). Honestly, she's still more beatable than the author thinks, but the Aura is a problem. They can grab her remains from this room and drag them back to the portal to the Realm and throw them in, killing her instantly. Or they can convince Karl this isn't his mother with a Charm-30 (With a 10-30 point modifier depending on their arguments), a +20 modifier if they were his friends, and a -20 if they ever tried to murder him. If they succeed, they convince the boy to resist her. She's promised him love, normalcy, a family, an ordinary life. She's convinced him she's his mother and she can take all his problems away. If they succeed, he uses his aura on HER, telling her to 'go away'. This flings her into the dark portal and kills her instantly.

So I can show off all three of the interesting options, and because I think it's more dramatic, we'll be showing off a mixture. Katarine runs to Karl's side and takes his hand, telling him she'll get him away from here, back to sane places where crazy people aren't killing each other over him. She pleads with the boy to look around himself and realize where he is, how this thing is using him just like the Crusaders and the Cultists and all these Vampires have tried to. She asks if the black aura surrounding him really seems like his mother. He blinks a moment and says 'No'. Enraged, the Witch manifests as best she can and summons her spirit to try to drive off the interlopers, so I can show off what her stats look like if she confronts the team. Shanna yells to Johan to remember what the Crone said, and he finds the bones, tossing them to the halfling. They run off to try to kill this thing for good while Sif walks forward, cracking her neck. You see, she actually has decent odds of soloing the Witch, and she can definitely keep her busy. And she won't be alone. While Oleg goes to cover Johan and Shanna (suspecting guardians will come after them), Syphan cracks her knuckles and joins Sif, and Katarine steps up between the monster and the child. The Witch stares incredulously, asking if they really intend to approach rather than run away. Sif shrugs and mentions she can't beat the shit out of a monster nearly as well unless she gets close.

The Witch does d10+10 damage per hit. She's mean as hell on that front. But what's she lacking that makes this doable? She's accurate, she hits hard, she has a lot of wounds, she has a LOT of DR. But she lacks Unstoppable Blows, so Sif can Parry one attack at 93% and Dodge another at 70%, rather than being at 63 and 70. Sif also has a lot of Wounds. Syphan can block up to 3 blows a turn, too, once she has her sentinel up. Plus, these are PCs. They're probably low on Fortune, but might have one or two points left, which can be spent for extra active defenses. It will take the Witch a few rounds, and Katarine is in the back to heal them. Meanwhile, they Outnumber her, giving both heroes +10% to WS. If the whole team was ganging up on her, they'd be even better off. The whole 'split off' thing? Partly to make this a fight! The *real* threat is the Witch has Lore of Chaos (base book) and 5 Mag. Word of Pain is a Damage 8 Armor Ignore that causes a WP save or be Stunned one turn. Word of Pain (and maybe Burning Blood against Syphan, for 5 Damage 4 hits Syphan can't dodge) are the Witch's trump cards, but she suffers the same Chaos Dice issue the heroes do. The Witch also actually goes first, with that 88 Agi. She can also Dodge one attack at 88% each turn, though she lacks a free-parry option.

The Witch starts it off with Word of Pain, trying to shake the two heroes as they make their walkup. And sure, it goes off, but she also suffers a 3 die miscast and catches on fire. She'll be taking d10 unsaveable wounds per round until she makes a half-action Agi test to put it out. They mistake this for some kind of magic power aura. She also slams them with a full 10 on the damage die, doing 13 Wounds to Syphan and 11 to Sif, which is a nasty start. Katarine rushes in to heal 8 to Syphan, as both resist Stun. The Witch takes 10 Wounds herself, though, and she can't afford that kind of fire. Syphan summons her claws (avoiding miscasts, luckily) and Sif takes her big round of swings. And Furies. For 11 Wounds on the first swing, 3 wounds on the second, as the Witch just narrowly Dodges the third, staring in surprise at how badly she's bleeding. She puts out the fire, then realizes almost all her spells are full actions. Except Burning Blood, which she tries on the big Norsewoman since Katarine healed Syphan. 5 Damage 4 hits nail Sif, but Sif is DR 12. Even with 2 max damage rolls, the Witch only inflicts 4 more. Sif isn't even Heavily Wounded, though she's definitely in trouble. The two lay into their enemy after Katarine risks another miscast and buffs Syphan's Str by 20, and between the two of them and the fire damage, they rend the Witch apart. Sif beats the holy hell out of the monster and drives it back just enough for Syphan's last blow, which rolls a Fury as she punches the Witch's face to dust. Those stats were not enough. If they'd been at 'only' 3000 EXP or so, the whole party could have taken her; the real kicker would've been the -30 WP Aura to be able to fight her at first. Still, she's not nearly as invincible as the story thinks.

Meanwhile, Shanna, the little halfling, resists the lure of Chaos and all its power, walking right up to the edge of the dark portal, and tosses the bones in. Behind her, Johan and Oleg are holding off the very first wave of spiders; it's more dramatic that way. The Witch is trying to claim she'll just reform and this victory will last but moments when she screams, her entire essence being rendered to nothing by Shanna's actions as Syphan and Sif fist bump and Katarine grabs Karl. The whole Womb begins to collapse around them as they sprint back to the safer world above. Spiders are dying everywhere as Katarine carries the terrified little boy out into the dawn, the heroes escaping the collapsing Womb.

In the normal ending, at this point, if any PCs have any mutations, they 'feel the psychic pull to go north and become a Warrior of Chaos'. Otherwise, it suggests one more time they could just kill Karl, or I dunno, maybe save him. Our heroes knew what they were going in for, though. The little boy is sobbing, apologizing for what he almost did as confused vampires stumble out of the wreckage and slink into the night. Katarine takes his hand and tells him it's okay. He's just a kid. She'll take care of him now, and find some way to control his powers. She knows what the monster promised him, and that all he really wants is just a normal and happy life. Oleg remarks that witch thing didn't *seem* much like a minion compared to how easy Ruprecht went down. Shanna just says she's glad it's finally over, punting a dead spider into the lake. Syphan sets Rose on her shoulder, cleaning off her gloves after punching the shit out of an evil witch, as Sif tells the others she's found glory even if she didn't find much gold. Johan wonders if this is really over; Syphan says that throwing someone into the yawning gulf of unreality after beating the shit out of their physical form is one of the only things that works 10/10 times. The sun is finally coming up as the exhausted heroes make their way back to Zhidovsk, needing a stiff drink, a good meal, and a roof over their head before they begin the long journey back to the Empire.

PCs who somehow kill the Black Witch get a massive 800 EXP and 2 Fate Points. This will factor into the final 'where are they now' afterwards, because we're getting an epilogue and a long 'how to fix this fucking pile of an adventure'.

Needless to say, I had to jazz up the final encounter because a single Charm Test to win the campaign is a little boring. The abused spouse they rescued in the beginning talking the kid out of the worst to help save the world is dramatic, but the others deserved to get to strut their stuff, too. The final encounter with the Witch is lacking because there's no connection to her. She's just a big pile of powers OR a couple cutscenes and a skill check kill. The Hall of Exposition to frantically try to introduce the main villain right before they fight her is not how you do it, Thousand Thrones. It's not how you do it at all.

Next Time: The Last of the Heroes.

Epilogue

posted by Night10194 Original SA post

Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 2e: Thousand Thrones

Epilogue

They had been through an awful lot. From saving Talabheim and revealing the existence of the Skaven to the Empire at large, to destroying a two century old Chaos Champion they had no idea about, to killing the considerably fewer centuries old Chaos Champion they DID know about, the Thousand Crowns have done a great deal for the Empire and the cause of all who resist the monstrosities of the Old World. No-one would ever know about their battle with Ruprecht or the Black Witch; who would possibly believe them? 'We battled a terrible witch in her hellwomb full of spiders' sounds too unbelievable to even be a Felix Jaeger or Dietlef Sierck story. Their part in the salvation of Talabheim officially buried to prevent massive legal repercussions, they had made plenty of friends there all the same, and so it was the natural next destination for the heroes.

The realization that the Witch had not promised power or other conventional Chaos trickery convinced the heroes they were correct to protect the boy Karl. All she had offered him was a life without the powers he had slowly realized he had, the ones that were making him miserable and making crazy people kill each other over him. A life with a mother and a family and a house. Between Katarine and Syphan's magic, and the team's considerable abilities as veteran adventurers, the next year or so was consumed with discovering a way to give the boy what he had wished, a ritual that could suppress such supernatural charisma. After all, who knows when the Empire will face someone with the same powers but considerably more ill intent than a lonely ten year old boy who just wants safety and friends? It may have taken several adventures gathering all manner of insane magical ingredients (talking a dragon into letting them pull a tooth was probably the hardest part) but when it was over, they had given the boy what Chaos could not, and knew a path to destroy any such compulsion aura in other enemies the world may face some day.

Selling the knowledge of the Rite of the Silenced King to the Colleges of Magic finally made them exactly one thousand crowns, too.

The original purpose of their fellowship ended (making one thousand crowns, collectively), the heroes moved on in life, as people do.

Katarine Schmidt retired earlier than many of her new friends from a life of adventure. She had an adoptive son to take care of, after all. She and Karl moved to Hochland, where she became a parish priestess of Rhya near the capitol of Hergig. Katarine split her time between rebuilding the devastated province, tending to the harvests and the marriages of the citizens, and taking care of her adoptive son. She would eventually find a much healthier marriage than the one she'd left to join the Thousand Crowns, settling down with a failed university student who had found work as a schoolmaster. She rarely took up the sacred longbow or the call of adventure again, preferring to spend the rest of her life in peace as a doctor, a priestess, a mother, and a healer of the land. Sometimes one epic adventure is enough in life.

Her old friends are always welcome in her home. She was also pleased to see her eldest son eventually begin to heal from the trauma of being involved in death march crusades, vampire battles, and spider witch hell wombs, with Karl eventually finding a calling as an Initiate of Shallya. He wanted to follow in his mother's footsteps and do what he could to heal the sort of pain he'd seen as a boy.

Shanna Applebottom had never really found what she wanted in the world of very serious people, but she kept at it. Adventure had saved the world and showed her she could be a heck of a leader if she wanted to, so she got out of adventure and crime and into the one Very Serious Realm she had not yet tried: Politics. Never returning to the Moot, Shanna instead moved to Altdorf and worked tirelessly to find a post in the Imperial Bureaucracy, reasoning that maybe here she could find someplace where she could socialize some, quietly do math more, and maybe keep the books straight. It was not to be, as her aggressive drive for ordering and reforming would see her promoted over and over again, becoming the first Halfling to be appointed to the Imperial Privy Council since the chef of Ludwig the Fat. The prior Imperial Minister of the Household had been terribly aged and stressed by managing the post-Storm debt crisis, and when he retired, Shanna Applebottom was there, trying to make sure everything was in order. She never actually wanted the job, but someone else would have done it wrong.

The halflings named one of the scholarships to the Imperial universities in her honor for accidentally advancing the political profile of the Moot's people. The occasional Very Serious halfling who wants to do serious mathematics can still attend Imperial universities on the Shanna Applebottom Scholarship for Mathematics.

Johan Kleiner went straight back to Talabheim when the team's adventures were done. He had a job waiting for him with Elector Countess Elise, who remembered well that the heroes had saved her life during the sack of her city. She had many, many uses for a man of his many talents. Johan's role in keeping the Skaven from coming back to the city and protecting the government of Talabheim would never reach recorded history books; that's hardly the way of a professional in the field of intelligence. Many cult Magi would be surprised to find themselves arrested shortly after taking on an excellent new chef. Skaven would find a truly fabulous cheese dish they could hardly resist, only to find it laced with rat poison. Time and again, enemies of the city suffered curious accidents, with nobody there to witness them but a bunch of servants.

Johan eventually retired a wealthy but obscure man, going on to finally fulfill his original dream and open his own restaurant. It enjoyed modest success, which is all he asked for. Asked about what he did before opening the Stag's Rest, he would simply tell patrons he 'sometimes cooked, but usually cleaned'.

Oleg Balinson stayed on the road. His feet were always itching and there's always call for a dwarf who doesn't mind being out and about. He took up the mantle of a Holdseeker, looking for evidence of the lost remnants of the old Dwarven Empire. His adventures led him all through the Empire and beyond, often crossing paths with his old friends and sometimes pulling them along for another crazy venture into a goblin-filled hellhole or Skaven-infested tunnel. When that grew too familiar for him, he traveled to Karak Barr and took up a career on their steamships, sailing to the New World to explore further, before coming back to his familiar haunts. He is currently planning expeditions into the Southlands and Araby, and the lands of Khemri. All of this is naturally for the good of his hold and the dwarven people, not simply because he really likes traveling and seeing new places.

He brought Syphan several barrels of New World tree-sap syrup from one of his adventures the last time he saw her. It is considered one of the greatest gifts an elf has received from a dwarf since Bel Shanaar was gifted the first barrel of the strongest possible dwarven beer.

Syphan of Naggarond eventually told her friends where she was actually from. Nobody actually cared that much by that point. They'd been through a hellwomb together, it was clear what side of things she was on. With the wisdom granted by being lectured at by a tiny magical raccoon, she slowly realized she was not actually some kind of secret master of High Magic as she had thought. Her power had grown considerably by doing things her own way, however, so she decided to continue on the road she'd taken so far. She never settled down, always wandering from place to place, occasionally visiting her old friends to help them with any of their new problems and sometimes taking on apprentices from among Imperial hedge wizards and witches. She sought to teach other mages how to master the mind and body through a regimen of martial arts and punching vampires in their smug faces, founding her own small tradition of mystical warriors. Most of her apprentices lacked her sheer drive and her natural talent for punching, and most ended up going to the normal colleges after learning the basics from her. Still, she's left an accidental mark on a few Imperial collegiate graduates, who go on to teach their own students that being able to throw a punch is an important part of understanding the nature of magic.

She's really happy Oleg gave her that syrup. She is currently trying to learn Life Magic solely to be able to create it herself from the trees, a venture that is going to kill at least one Vampire Lord and probably destroy at least one Glade Lord of the Athel Loren.

Sif Gundredsdottir never found the piles of gold her father did with her party. She suspected he just got lucky and framed his extraordinary experiences as a piece of solid advice for all adventurers. Still, she'd made some good friends, found good wargear, and learned an awful lot about beating the everloving shit out of evil. That done, she took the most direct approach she could find, making her way to and somehow robbing the Fortress of Brass that Archaon had retreated to. How she managed this alive and unmutated is unknown, though she certainly killed several Chaos Champions in duels and jacked their warbands. Having robbed an Everchosen, she returned to Norsca with her giant pile of extremely fulfilling gold, setting out to become a Queen. She founded the clan of the Isoltlings, a tribe that would forever have a tradition of female chiefs and rulers. Her great grandaughter, Eydis Falkisdottir, would go on to unite southern Norsca and throw off some of the shackles of Chaos, building the great city of Eydisheim about 80 years later. But that's another story. A very long story.

Being as she'd founded a tribe in southern Norsca, she often had business trading in Marienburg and the Empire. Whenever possible, she would check on her old friends, and her Godson Karl. Most of the Old World never knew the deeds of Sif Gundredsdottir, but they never forgot. She eventually died in her sixties, mortally wounded after a great battle with a Chaos Dragon; she was able to get one last look at her enormous pile of gold, her loyal warriors, and her many daughters before she died, fulfilled.

Rose the Raccoon is the smartest goddamn raccoon on the planet. She is still following Syphan around, lecturing her, trying to get her to get into the academic side of things. To date she has been mostly unsuccessful. Her hobbies include calculus, fishing for crawdads, washing things, and the study of international relations and advanced magical theory. Syphan would be lost without her. Literally, since the elf can't read a map to save her life.

I hope you enjoyed Thousand Thrones. I had a great time coming up with a group of weirdos to bumble through it, and I think they did a good job of showing off why higher level WHFRP is a worthwhile experience and how the sense of progression can actually feel. Next, we're going to talk about how this plot could perhaps have been salvaged, before moving on to a new team and putting the poor people through Plundered Vaults and the Barony of the Damned Mini campaign. Their adventures will not suck nearly as much as the Thousand Crowns.

Next Time: Fixing The Thousand Thrones

What Went Wrong

posted by Night10194 Original SA post

Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 2e: Thousand Thrones

What Went Wrong

So the Thousand Thrones is not a good campaign. It's railroaded to hell, has tons of chapters where nothing happens, has very wonky balance, and ends in a huge dungeon crawl full of BS against a foe that the PCs don't really have a lot of cause to care about. Yes, they save the world in the end, but a very 'dodge the falling knife' or 'treading water' sort of saving the world against a black space witch from nowhere isn't particularly satisfying; taking the stakes right up to THE VERY WORLD AT STAKE with a villain who has to have a Hall of Hasty Backstory to tell the PCs who the fuck they're dealing with in the room before the final boss rings hollow. The Vampires are poorly integrated into the plot and waste both the vampires themselves and a lot of time on Deep Lore that probably doesn't matter to the PCs and doesn't actually matter to the story since it's all them being duped. The Crusade of the Child has some interesting potential but is completely wasted because it's viewed more as a means to drag the players around and walk from place to place as any sort of entity in the story. What does the Crusade do during the campaign? They forage off the land a little, get some people killed, travel around to major landmarks and camp outside of them, and then all die or give up off screen. They never matter.

To some extent this is not the authors' faults. I have to be fair. Seeing that the vampires were added to the story on dictates from above halfway through the campaign's development does a lot to excuse how badly used the vampires are. Similarly, having 8 different authors with one cowriter/editor having a heavy enough hand to get his name put into the writing credits on half the scenarios while also writing his own scenario and overseeing all development of the campaign was always going to be a mess. Most of the scenarios are barely connected and the Crusade has to serve as 'glue' because there's a bunch of different visions pulling at things. The same thing hurt Paths of the Damned, especially because Schwalb is not a very good fiction writer or adventure writer to begin with. Having him write the climax of both big narrative campaigns (and having him be the driving force for Thousand Thrones) was not good. But everything being a mess is as much a result of 'tons of authors' as 'any one author is good or bad'. Dan White's scenario with the passion play was great! It's the only one I genuinely had fun reading and writing up. But it's one scenario.

The multiple authors thing and the demands from above don't just muddle the scenario, they muddle the book. Tons of the information in this book is very...GM-only. Only the GM knows it and there's little on how to convey it to the players. The Deepest Lore horseshit in Chapter 7 is so boring not just because it's all a red herring but because it presupposes the PCs will play along with the DaVinci Code stuff which they have no real reason to do; they'd have to be visiting random temples to look at frescoes during their long coach trip to really get into it at all. If the scenario is totally unaffected by the players not bothering, something should be cut from the scenario.

Similar, with so many authors, the book struggles with too many villains. Trying to have Ruprecht, The Black Witch, AND a Vampire of every Bloodline is too much. It leaves no time to focus on specific villains and build a connection. Look at Leibnitz in Ashes of Middenheim. He's got his issues (lack of motive, Knightfight, the fact that he mostly just decides to fuck up) but by the time PCs get their hands on that fucker they want him dead. He has fucked them personally twice, refusing to pay them and then betraying the shit out of them. He's a smarmy, confident asshole who uses his position well to protect himself and infuriate the players, and the heroes do actually get to confront him and fuck him up after sufficient buildup. When my players played that adventure, they were happy to shoot that fucker in the throat with a crossbow. The Black Witch has no presence in this story. She isn't even introduced until very late. She could basically be cut and Ruprecht made the main villain and nothing would be lost besides the Hell Womb dungeon.

Similar, Ruprecht gets the start of a good character, though I'd have made him Tzeentch. A young prodigy of magic who was deeply wronged by his asshole father, beaten and kicked when he tried to do the right thing, and who fell into vicious black magic because of his father's evil smuggled goods? Who then went and exacted disproportionate revenge on his dad, and then also ruined his brother and his brother's family, who had never done anything to him, and murdered his own mother? Good, you've got an actual motive, a fall, a reason someone walked too far into darkness and became a crazy dark sorcerer. But he never gets the development he needs either, partly because his character dungeon is too dull and doesn't have much environmental storytelling rather than strict exposition, but partly because he gets shoved out of the way for the Black Witch.

A vampire interested in all of this might've made a good side villain as a break from Chaos and Sigmarism. But I would have focused a campaign on the Crusade, and had Tzeentch Ruprecht be trying to take control of it and set up a 'win-win' situation. Either he gets Karl as a puppet, or Karl is the puppet of crazy Sigmarites who cause chaos in the Empire and the Cult and who enable Johan Esmer to be Anti-Theoganist. Esmer should have been a major villain. Esmer's been set up as a major campaign villain in multiple sourcebooks. A Sigmarite Monodominant being a tool of Chaos without ever being a Chaos Cultist because he's a selfish, greedy, bigotted asshole would have been awesome! If you need more villainous dimensions, maybe add a second cult that's interested in snatching Karl to study instead of all this planning. But you need fewer villains and more focus on them, and the Witch is honestly the easiest villain to cut.

Why does the Witch suck, and if you were intent on fixing her, what would you do? I've hammered it over and over. She doesn't really have a character, but she also doesn't even have a gimmick! She never sends minions against the party to tell you her character as a villain, she never talks to them outside of some vague dream sendings if you're on the 'winning' path, everything about her comes out of left field. Your villain can get away with being a little shallow or cliche if they at least have a gimmick that's memorable. But she's got a hook they do nothing with; she's a product of the destruction of Praag and a former Hag. You can work with that to make a real villain.

A redone Black Witch wouldn't have a hell-womb, she'd have a lair hidden inside the dark parts of Praag no-one goes to because they're too hot. She's the legacy of the tragedy of Praag, goddamnit, set your final chapter in Praag. It's a cool city. Give her an actual reason she surrendered rather than died; maybe she always felt a call to power, maybe she resented having to bargain with spirits and be spit on by Gospodar. Maybe she was a person sick of asking and now she can take. Anything. It doesn't have to be super deep, she just needs a reason she said yes when darkness called; Ruprecht has that, at least. Give her a gimmick; my idea would be that she actually keeps her bargains. If you deal with the Black Witch of Praag, you get what you asked for and give what she asked from you. She gets the better of the deals, but they don't all just destroy her bargainers. Make her a dark(er) reflection of the Wise Woman of the Woods. Keep the bit where she's promising Karl a normal life, but make her mean it. She won't kill him. Why should she? If he comes before her and offers all that makes him special, she'll be happy to take it away. Even set him up with a loving mother and a happy family. In return for empowering her with his Aura instead. The Aura alone is something you don't want a terrifying hell witch getting!

Her being in a hotzone in Praag would also give you a chance to characterize the final dungeon by reflecting on how badly Praag got fucked. Give the PCs some insufficient protective equipment and a warning that they can only be in there for X number of hours, and after Y they'll be at risk of mutation and sickness. Send them into the goddamn Exclusion Zone. A time limit they actually know about and a situation where they feel they have to press on anyway is much more dramatic.

The reason none of this is done, though, is because one of the other core sicknesses of Thousand Thrones is how mean-spirited and cruel it is. Take Hannah's death. Hannah could have just hung herself. A character with no support structures, deeply depressed, feeling hugely guilty, might succumb to suicidal ideation. But having her fail, then slowly bleed out while begging for help unnoticed? The fuck does that add besides 'someone thinks it's cool that there's lots of extra suffering'. Warhammer is often a black comedy setting, but that kind of thing goes well beyond comedy and into just pointless mean-spirited cruelty. Which also makes it a story that is too busy reveling in butchery and suffering (and a lot of brutality specifically to women, which is something we'll be seeing more of in Plundered Vaults and something the line's adventures should be dinged for) to even remember any of this is tragic. If you don't consider the pain and loss to be anything but a fun bit of splatterhouse comedy, you can't get a somber trip into a hellish exclusion zone built from the tragedy of a great city as a final dungeon. You just get more shit and gore in a hellwomb. Who the fuck writes the whole Katarine encounter in the original? Or the mutants who help you, show they're ordinary people, and then get shot to death/abandoned to die no matter what you do. Sure, grim, perilous, blah blah, but at a certain point it just feels pointlessly mean and will make players stop engaging.

Also, on a mechanical/gameplay level, Schwalb's dungeon design is actually very simple to figure out. 'Challenge' dungeons usually are, their designers usually have patterns. The one here is that you shouldn't touch or engage with anything. Which is the most boring possible way to do 'challenge'. Anything you engage with that you don't have to just hurts you, and almost never has treasure, clues, or rewards. There's no risk-reward in these delves. Take the Hatchery of the spiders. Your only real good option is to back off, do nothing, and never learn what her plan is. Touching them in any way hurts you and the world. There's no option to find a way to destroy them or thwart the plan, you just close your eyes, back away, and keep swinging. The right solution is always doing as little as possible and not engaging. As it has been since Tomb of Corruption. His personal taste for mutation is also potentially ruinous to a campaign, because mutations that render a PC unplayable are very, very common, especially if you use the beloved d1000 table in ToC. You can spend Fate to avoid a mutation, sure, but that's a temporary solution at best. The issue is that mutation can effectively wipe you out in one bad roll. Combat is pretty unlikely to do that. It takes a fair bit to die in combat, especially late in a WHFRP campaign. There are more decisions you can make to avoid it, too. The writer really enjoying mutation can derail things a lot because the chances you turn inside out or otherwise get something you cannot possibly hide are very high and effectively cause Fate burns if your GM even lets you spend Fate to stop them. There's a difference between 'the PCs are heroes, who may be marked by mutation and may have touched dark things that heroes officially don't touch' and 'roll a save or die'. The former is thematic, the latter is what happens in practice. 2e dearly needed some kind of gauge on mutation rather than it being binary checks, and Schwalb's personal taste for it hurts the balance of his scenarios. It mostly comes up in the ones he writes. And the BS bit about 'any PC with a mutation feels the Call to come north and goes and becomes a Chaos Warrior' undercuts the really neat theming on Mutation and the Empire being wrong about it.

So yeah. Thousand Thrones is a mean spirited mess. You could get a decent campaign out of the hook (a magical child being used by people around him, whose greed and viciousness is reflected despite their supposed 'devotion' to him) but you'd need to toss out a lot and focus down on a couple villains. It's probably not worth doing.

As I said in the beginning: Do not expose Thousand Thrones directly to face. See you all in Plundered Vaults!

The End