Crimson Rain Adventure

By PadreBoniface, in WFRP Gamemasters

Do you guys have any quick tips for running Crimson Rain adventure from Omens of War? I am going to run it on friday. I would be blessed by Sigmar if you could share your ideas to how to enhance it or could give me some hints of where to be careful.

Sadly I haven't run it, or any of the four Liber Chaotica adventures. I can say that I've been very pleased with the written adventures so far, and from reading Crimson Rain I think it would be good.

I am wary of the idea that a Chaotic artifact could lead to a player death just like that, so I would do all you can to stay away from that little caveat. If you think your group would be okay with it, then go for it.

I am very much looking forward to your feedback from playing it though as I will probably run it with my group one day!

It is a combat heavy adventure in some sections, so if you have any characters that are not fighters you should consider how to engage them throughout the adventure in a good way.

Also, depending on PC rank and fighting capability it could be very dangerous, there's a risk players die. At one point during the adventure both our fighting characters were in bad shape and it would probably have been a total party whipe out if we had not gotten luckey. So you should consider how to handle character death and the risk of multiple dead PCs. Do your players have replacement characters ready? Should you as a GM prepare a few replacements in case one or more PCs die in the middle of a session?

And at the very end there's a risk that a PC becomes an NPC . This could happen due to a few bad dice rolls, so you should consider how the players feel about that.

I did a post about this when I was planning to run it and how it went:

https://community.fantasyflightgames.com/topic/103503-premade-characters-for-crimson-rain/

To sum it up: The scenario is better the more scenes you use. But the more scenes you use, the more time the adventure takes because there will be a LOT of fighting. It is also an adventure that works best with combat-oriented characters.

I remember, someone had an idea of making new combat characters just for that adventure. If they die, noone cares, and if someone manage to survive, maybe give their regular character some bonus?

Yeah, I ran the adventure with two player characters created for the scenario. They both had back stories that tied them into the scenario and gave them clear motivation to participate: A knight on a personal quest for the Spear Of Myrmidia and an Outrider who was left behind by his company and is itching to win some glory.

I love doing one-offs with expendable characters since it often allows the players to be a bit more careless and do whatever they think is cool without worrying about their old and cherished character dying.

Thank you very much for the tips so far. I am intending to run this as a finale for my campaign so I am not rally affraid to kill PC. Furthermore, I really hope someone loses the battle of wits, as I will make him the leader of Chaos forces in the next campaign, which is going to be Enemy Within. This way, the PCs will really hunt for rumors about the war in the north, and the players, hopefully, will feel rewarded ;)

I will certainly share my thoughts afterwards.

Edited by PadreBoniface

Oh, in that case I could give advice almost opposite to what I said above, The marauders you fight throughout the adventure are quite weak. So if you are at the end of your campaign you might consider giving them an increased wound threshold, or better characteristics. At rank 2 we found that the marauders were quite easy kills (in a party with 2 combat focused characters, 1 with some combat ability and 1 who did not participate at all in combat).

Big "THANK YOU" for the tips, it just all went more or less as you have described it.

Before I write my short summary: for each session I create "mini-quest-sheets" for my players, based on what race/career is their hero. There are always 3 mini-quests, each worth 0,2 experience point, and the tasks are like: "Teach other PCs something about your God", "Cite an ancient elven prophecy as a justification for your actions", "Use the Ulgu wind to trick someone" etc. These are more like guides rather than strict instructions, and my players are free to choose the moment and way to fulfil them, or just ignore them. I am mentioning it because this will be important later in the adventure (or maybe you will use it too, my players like it).

Soo... first of all, if your Friday sessions were not that brutal or bloody - I apologize, for it was our fault, as definitely Khorne himself was sitting at our table. We started the finale for my campaign at the morning after the Skaeling ride (we played the earlier part on the previous session). I tried to solve each listed encounter (apart from final battle of Dreizack, which we played by the book) with one or two rolls based on what actions were taken and it worked very well - I followed Ralzar advice of cutting the number of rolls. We skipped 2 encounters, but the whole session took us 6 hours, so if we played each fight following the normal encounter rules, it would have taken forever.

My players, well, they really let the characters succumb to bloodlust. They only started having second thought after Ziege killed Mann Hirsch, but it was obviously too late. The main reasons for them falling under Khorne spell is that there were really no quick consequences for killing people. Instead there was appreciation from Ziege side. The marauders were no threat for rank 2 and 3 mounted characters. To help my players with immersion I choose music mostly from The Witcher 2 and 3 - you can find there some really rage-inspiring tracks. Also, for the last battle I used Syrinscape Haunted Heart, Storm and Fire Elemental (for Battle of wits) soundsets.

As the final battle started, the PCs reached 15 spot on Blood Tracker, I replaced the aforementioned "mini-quest-sheets" with another one: Kill XXX, where XXX was the name of another PC. Each player got one of those. The reward was 2 XP points. It added even more tension and led to a situation when, after the Batltle of Wits and killing Ziege, the players were pointing with all the weapons at one another and didn’t want to turn their backs ;) Funny, and entertaining, although, sadly, no one got hurt.

I already talked with one of the players and she (!!!) rated this adventure 10/10. She told me Battle of Wits was perfect for campaign summary (we played this as Ralzar suggested, halving the number of rolls, but anyways the players recalled all important events from one year of gaming. Also, after the session, my players decided that next characters are going to be some kind of butchers ;)

I personally think what makes this story great, apart from the PCs choices and delayed consequences which are obvious advantages, are the 3 NPC characters - Bok, Hirsch and Ziege. I really recommend that you think about them before the session and properly flesh them out. I decided that Bok is more like a planner and strategy oriented character, while Hirsch was kind of a brave-scout/green-beret type of guy. It was dramatic for my players to lose them both just before the final battle. They really tried to stop it from happening but, as I have mentioned before, Khorne took care of all dice rolls this session. Also, I suggest you introduce Willi as fast as you can - even before arriving in Neues Emskrank. Then, you will have time to play Wilie, let the players get to know him, and then show them his change not by saying: "you notice he is changing" but by acting - try to shout some curses really loud, while banging your hand on the table, describe him breathing fast and so on. It really worked well.

Great to hear it worked out so well and my comments were of use! :D

Fleshing out Bok, Hirsch and Ziege and introducing Willi are things I agree with. When I ran it I only found out I needed to run it while at work the same day, so I didn't have quite the prep time I needed. I would really like to run this adventure again in the future with some more prep-time.

One of the things I really liked about this adventure is the fact that it shows the insidiousness of chaos. Even though the chaos god is Khorne, which everyone assumes has no subtlety at all. The players easily march right into his arms because they think slaughtering enemies doesn't count as long as they do it for "the right reasons" which is just how Khorne gets you.

Edited by Ralzar

Is it possible to run this adventure in one 4.5h session? Assuming that the PCs are good and an efficient group.

I would say yes, if the group is very focused and efficient. There are quite a few combats thought, and they tend to take up a lot of time, so if I was to GM the adventure in such a limited time frame I'd probably remove or change some combat encounters to make them shorter.

I think our group through the adventure in about 10 hours, but we are not that efficient while playing. :)

Edited by k7e9

In my opinion this would be a waste of such a great adventure! Of course you can squeeze it into 45h session, but please don't! :)

If you need short adventure that fits into one night I'd recommend Wind of Change from Winds of Magic or The Harrower of Thanes from the dwarven supplement. Also, check out the one-page adventures on Daily Empire blog - there are some decent scripts that you can use in many situations.

Is it possible to run this adventure in one 4.5h session? Assuming that the PCs are good and an efficient group.

I think that's about the time I used. However, this will only work if you do not use the combat rules. This scenario has a LOT of combat and no matter how efficient the players are, this takes time. Do what I did: ask each player what skill he wants to use during the combat, then give him an appropriate number of Challange Dice etc and have him make a roll to see how he did during the combat. Banes and Fails cause Wounds. Chaos Stars cause Critical Wounds.

I only used the proper combat rules for the final "boss fight".

Edited by Ralzar

Thank you for your answers and advice about the other adventures. I will check The Harrower of Thanes and as for The Winds of Change, I am currently running this adventure, but it doesnt go that fast, neither I try to speed up things, instead I focus to present almost all the NPCs to make that Schmutzplatz as interesting place as possible. Also, I need some kind of action-adventure with a big ending and some decisions to make during the game that will affect the ending. Crimson Rain seems to be of that kind. I should also add that I use SW EotE system which I think is faster than WH3, I did a kind of conversion.