Trouble in Teufeltal, a Warhammer Fantasy Campaign, session one

In my previous post I talked a bit about the new Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay ruleset based on a preview PDF. Using these rules I’ve set-up a campaign to play through and gathered a group to play it with. Last Friday we had a chance to get started. It was a night short on story, as building the characters with the group took up most of the evening, but big on fun. In this post I’ll run through a very brief overview of the story I've planned, give a summary of the game and end up with some of the things I learned gamemastering. 

Every adventure begins with a proper map (in this case inspired by a map in WFRP 3rd).

Quick sidenote: If any of my players are reading this, please stop as I’ll stuff these posts so full of spoilers it’ll ruin the game for you :).

Picking a ready made scenario
I had many ideas for a new campaign, but when the time came to plan things out, I discovered every single one of them either didn’t work or had escaped me entirely. Also re-entering the Old World after a lot of time spent in the Mortal Realms took a bit of work. With the first game-session fast approaching the time to panic arrived. Luckily (like many gamers) I suffer from Book Hoarding Syndrome (BHS), so I have plenty of old supplements to leaf through. I ended up picking an adventure published in the Hero’s Call supplement for the previous (3^rd) edition of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay.

Reworking an adventure 

The upside of published adventures is that you get a wealth of information, things to do and (usually) some maps. The downside is that the things to do usually don’t quite fit my group. It makes reworking adventures a must in my eyes. Another thing that irks me about published adventures is that the authors often provide a wealth of information to the GM without giving any hooks to share it with the players. A very good illustration of this happening is the ‘Terror of the Lichemaster’ for Warhammer Fantasy 1^st. It has a riveting story about a deranged Necromancer summoning an undead Chaos Champion. The only thing the players will experience of page-after-page of background is a distant single bolt of lightning in the night.

Bird's eye plot overview

But I digress. The adventure in Hero’s Call is set in and around Teufeltal. It features Schluesselschloss, a castle that guards a pass between Reikland (Empire) and Bretonnia. In the original adventure the players have to help fight of a besieging Orc Waaargh by recruiting allies while also solving an insidious deeper plot. I liked the setting and most of the characters but, in the spirit of Hollywood producers, at the same time I wanted to do everything differently. 

Every proper map begins with an offline drawing with a nice 1B pencil (in this case based on a map in Hero's Call).

New flow, new plot

So I’ve taken over most of the characters in the adventure but I’ve slowed the pace, changed the flow of what’s happening, added NPC’s, made new and different encounters and switched out the insidious deeper plot with one of my own making. All this will make the Waaagh build up more slowly. This should give the players more of a feel for the sheer size (and terror) of it. At the same time I have a chance to help my players discover the insidious deeper plot. Which should help the final stages of the campaign shine. 

Welcome to Teufeltal
Aside from changes to plot and antagonists I’ve added new friendly characters to Teufeltal. To add a bit of motivation I decided to make all my players residents of Tallerhof, the small village in the valley. Tallerhof is presided over by a mayor who is rumored to be an ex-smuggler (in truth he’s still the chief smuggler as the village’s main income is facilitating the smuggling of goods from Bretonnia to the Empire and vice versa). The mayor’s counterpart is father Siegfried, a zealot of a priest of Shallya (it had to be Shallya to fit one of my players characters).

The heroes in the story are:

1. Kylael Aspiro a human duellist (fencer) with noble blood. Rumor has the local Baroness gave birth to Kylael eleven months after the Baron left to fight a campaign in Wissenland. Kylael was raised in De Blanc’s School for Ladies until the age of fourteen (when having a boy around the ladies in training became risky). He was then moved to a house paid for by a mysterious benefactor. He lives in Tallerhof receiving a clandestine monthly stipend. Without any explanation as to why, he receives daily fencing lessons from the castle’s weapon master.
2. Micky, a halfling entertainer (busker). Micky’s parents fled accusations of fomenting rebellion in The Moot and after long travels settled down in Tallerhof. They worked hard at odd jobs *cough* helping the local smugglers *cough* to give their son a profession to be proud of. Micky used this opportunity to hone his acting and dancing skills and to learn to play the accordion. Being halflings, his parents applaud this wonderful career choice. After all it should allow him a wonderful life away from the Moot.
3. Barnard is a human priest (initiate) of Shallya. His daydreams of healing people made him a liability in the town’s trade. Although this trade has most definitively absolutely nothing to do with smuggling (*wink*), someone who is not watching out for patrols from the castle is not very useful. He was raised in the temple of Shallya. The local priest (and fanatical zealot) Siegfried trains his pupil in the ways of religion. His pupil also trained in ways of avoiding Siegried.
4. The dwarf Gorgor of the Golden Clan works as a watchman (watch recruit) in Tallerhof. Her family has left Karak Angaraz on a mysterious errand involving the local abandoned iron mine. Gorgor’s dreams of keeping the peace and patrolling the streets had no place in a small, clandestine dwarven expedition. Instead she was volunteered to work for the local watch where she’s active as a fresh and highly motivated recruit. The motivated part does not always sit well with the other local watchmen (who will avow that they have nothing to do with smuggling). 

The group
This small group of misfits mostly grew up together. They have fond memories of drinking borrowed altar-wine behind Shallya’s temple while listening to Micky sing.

The first game session 

Handouts add spice to every game. A larger map of the surroundingarea gives the players a real sense of being part of the larger world.

Trouble in Teufeltal - session 1The story opens with Micky playing during one of Tallerhof’s festivals. Baron Harold von Schluessel himself is in attendance (albeit at a distance from the villagers) as is a travelling merchant from Bretonnia. Kylael is making an ass of himself attempting to hook up with one (or both) of the Bretonnian merchant's daughters. Barnard is sitting next to Siegfried, practicing his judgmental stare and keeping an eye out against dancing. It’s not illegal, but you can up your judgmental stare a notch if you see people doing it. Gorgor is off in a side street, having been picked for patrol duty.

Opening act

Having seen the assignment coming, Gorgor quickly moves to a concealed barrel of ale. No sense in missing the festivities sober. Waving from the alleyway she invites Barnard who quickly joins her. Practicing your judgmental stare does not hold a candle to sneaking off and having a few drinks. In the meantime Kylael is getting his face slapped by both sisters. Micky is wondering why none of his fellow villagers throw any money in his collection bowl. They're not assuming the mayor has paid for this performance, are they?

Ambush!
In the alleyway Gorgor spots a long, grey sticky strand of something. Together with Barnard she looks up to find its origin. Above their heads a huge spider carrying a goblin rider is hanging from the roof of the building. Goblin and mount have their full attention on the festivities on the central square. As Gorgor and Barnard scream (warnings of course, no panic there at all), the spider leaps forward. It is joined by about a dozen fellow spider riders streaming in from all sides via rooftop and alleyway. Most of them head straight for the center of the square where the barrels of wine and ale are stacked around tables laden with food.

Of broken bones and spiderbites...
Micky is standing in the center of the square and caught utterly be surprise. A spider rider barrels into him. Micky can only gasp as the spider breaks a few of his ribs and covers him in web. Then the poison starts coursing through his veins. He is unable to resist it and even praying to Ranald for fortune does nothing. In the end Micky gives in to the dark voices whispering they can help. It seems to stop the poison from working, but at what cost? Gorgor charges the spider rider that wounded her friend and kills both the spider and the goblin riding it. Barnard runs towards the stricken Micky and prays to Shallya for help. Kylael pushes one of the Bretonnian Merchant’s daughters under the table for safety, and engages a spider rider walking his way.

Enter the big-boss
The entire village is in a state of panic. The guards surrounding the Baron are swamped by spiders and killed. After a few attempts Barnard manages to revive (and untangle) Micky. Micky looks up and sees an even bigger spider mounted by a very large goblin on top of a building. It is clearly directing its fellows. Micky lifts his hand and tries to warn his friends. Kylael sees the warning and attempts to use his sling to wound the large goblin.

Dwarf on a rampage

Having scored a proper hit with her charge Gorgor is on a roll, over the course of the encounter she kills a whopping total of three giant spiders and two goblins. As she is pursuing yet another goblin, she is hit by an arrow shot by the boss-goblin. This throws her of her game, but does not safe the fleeing goblin before her.

A sudden lapse of ethics 
Meanwhile Micky looks for the Baron and spots two pretty (and pointy) shoes that imply the Baron is on the ground and unconscious. He quickly moves towards the downed noble. He sees a purse hanging from the noble's belt. Having received no payment for his music he suffers from a lapse of ethics and ‘acquires’ the purse. He then takes a golden necklace of the noble’s neck and places it into his own pocket ‘for safekeeping’. His tender ministrations are interrupted by father Siegfried who – miraculously – fails to see the halflings thieving and starts caring for the Baron’s health.

Temptation under the table

One of the Bretonnian Merchant’s daughters calls out from under the table and tells Barnard and Kylael she doesn’t want to die a virgin. After a quick contest of charms she picks the initiate over the duellist to aid her in achieving stated ambition. Seeing his master occupied elsewhere, Barnard joins her under the table.

Extracurricular activities spotted

With the last surviving spiders fully loaded with supplies the goblins remount and retreat, skittering up the buildings and away over the rooftops. Meanwhile father Siegfried has managed to stabilize the baron. He looks up and the first thing he sees is his Initiate’s occupied with extracurricular activities beneath a table.

The Shocked Zealot

The shocked look of the priest was the ‘cliffhanger’ ending of the first evening of play. The combat was really hardcore with the surprised halfling getting slapped out of action and seriously wounded on the first blow. On the flipside with advantage stacking up the dwarf turned into a nightmare for the goblins. There only choice was running for their lives until the dwarf ran out of steam. The bad dice-rolling (and low Fellowship) of the duelist, the thieving activities of the halfling and the corruption point taken to prevent being poisoned added spice and enough fresh plot hooks to get this story going.

GM's perspective

On the downside I had to run the first session with sloppy prints from a draft version of the rules. 

Planning the encounter

From GM’s perspective it went quite nicely. I used the three act structure from the previous edition to plan this encounter. As it had to fit in an evening that also featured character generation I knew it had to be reasonably short. I like it when the entire group builds their characters together as it creates instant bonds and plot hooks between them. On the downside this takes a lot of (game) time. I don't want my player’s leaving without having played through at least a small bit of story. With this in mind I created an encounter that could be lengthened and shortened as needed. The summary: goblin spider riders raid a village feast to steal supplies. If (real) time runs out, I can just have the goblins run off with what they had captured so far. 

Creating NPC's in Warhammer 4th 
Designing the goblins was a matter of taking Goblin and Giant Spider stats from the core rulebook. The book also helps you customize and change the ready made creatures. For instance the Giant Spider's stats are meant for plate-sized spiders. A set of creature traits offers helps you change these according to different sizes. You could even go for house-(castle-)sized spiders if you wanted. I play-tested with large (horse-sized) spiders and discovered I had to tone that down to average (human-sized). I added a few other extra’s to them (poison and the ability to be mounted) and then combined my re-sized spiders with their goblin riders by using the mounted rules in the book. For those interested I used these notes to play them.

Goblin Spider Rider

M	WS	BS	S	T	I	Ag	Dex	Int	WP	Fel	W
4	25	30	30	30	20	35	30	30	20	20	11

Animosity, Armour 1, Afraid (Elves), Infected, Night Vision, Weapon +7, Arboreal, Ranged +7(25)

Giant Spider

M	WS	BS	S	T	I	Ag	Dex	Int	WP	Fel	W
5	35	25	35	45	10	25	30	5	25	-	13

Bestial, Night Vision, Size (Average), Wallcrawler, Web S40, Weapon +6, Venom (Average), Trained (Mount), Arboreal

Mounted goblins on average sized spiders use the movement of their spider in stead of their own (take ride tests for complicated moves).

Act 1 A nasty surprise
Act 1 was centered around the players doing their thing during the festivities. It gave them a chance to get a feel for their characters and allowed a bit of non-combat roleplay and dice rolling. It also gave the unwitting players a chance to discover that an ambush was about to be sprung. They could (and did) find spider web on the buildings. On very good rolls they might have discovered (spidery) foot prints or even catch a spider fully unaware to get an ambush in on the ambushers.

Act 2 Thieving goblin gits 

Act 2 started when the ambush was sprung. I wanted a large group of ambushers to give a good sense of danger during the encounter. As most of the fighting was background noise (spiders stealing food, soldiers fighting spiders, etc.) it gave me a chance to check the amount of spiders actually threatening the players. I rolled randomly which of the players got attacked first. The first blow was struck against the halfling, who with 8 wounds is also the weakest member of the group. The roll was horrifying and the first combat of the campaign almost opened with a fate point being burned. Luckily the critical was not instantly lethal. As a bonus the player missed his save against poison and his fortune reroll as well. So my campaign also featured a corruption point being handed on the opening moves. A nice sign of things to come.

Advantage in game 

The dwarf managed to rake up 10 Advantage, giving her a +100% bonus to attack and defense. This gave the goblins real motivation to start running for their lives (if you keep hacking at someone with that much advantage, they just get more lethal). In the end I checked the advantage by shooting the dwarf with an arrow. It caused almost no wounds but it instantly dropped the advantage back to 0. As I see it you can do three things with Advantage: 1) whine about it breaking the game, 2) use it to make for a better, more narrative game, 3) shoot at it with arrows. Funnily enough points 2 and 3 can be combined, point 1 I'll donate to random anonymous forum dwellers ;).

Unlucky dice rolls

During the encounter the priest had a streak of unlucky dice-rolls. He missed a roll for a aid prayer, and then missed the roll for a healing prayer. His third roll – another attempt at healing – worked. This was actually quite nicely timed as at that point the halfling was about to pass out from his wounds. 

Charm rolls in combat

The interaction between priest, the duelist and the Bretonnian Merchant’s daughter was a nice chance to have some random inter-party rivalry. The lucky roll for the thieving halfling and the bad perception roll for Siegfried the priest led to some extra excitement (and a bit of potentially troublesome loot being introduced to the group). I appreciated the player, having freshly acquired a corruption point, starting down a dark path and potentially adding an irate noble to the story.

Lucky cliffhanger

My real luck as GM came when the entire encounter managed to lead to a straying initiate getting spotted by his zealous master. It was all a matter of things accidentally coming together and working out. GM's Luck. We ran out of time to go to the concluding Act 3 of this encounter, but the cliffhanger was well worth it. All in all, a promising start.