Just reading through my new core set, and I wanted to make a comment that hopefully the Powers That Be at FFG will notice - I was very impressed with the included adventure. Not only was there a good mix of investigation, interesting characters and combat, but I was particularly impressed with the information that came with each character description - specifically 'how he interacts with the characters' and 'what he does if a fight breaks out'.

This kind of detail is incredibly helpful when running a game, and I hope the new adventures keep up this standard of excellence - please keep including information like this that makes running games easier!

Cheers

Howdo, I did some of the work on "An Eye for an Eye", and wrote the character reaction bits you've been so nice about. It's great to receive some feedback and hear that people liked it. Thanks very much!

Nice work Dave! It's in just these kind of areas that the new system has to continue the idea of innovation, in my opinion. Past WFRP adventures have all been fine, but ye olde envelope has to keep being pushed to make adventures easier for GMs to run and more fun for players. Useful information like how NPCs react to player characters and the situation around them is a great step. Other possibilities are things like event flowcharts, calendars, how NPCs react to other NPCs, small encounters and 'colour' events that can be inserted into the main narrative, locations that can be reused in other sessions with a minimum number of changes, weather and environmental events and descriptions ... we also need handouts, maps, character cards, and other types of printed aids, that the first version of WFRP introduced and have been a staple of the game.

There's so many possibilities to do things differently fron the old paradigms of adventure writing. I'm hoping to see this kind of innovation in the new boxed adventures. As someone who has always been a GM but has very little time to prepare sessions, anything that makes my job easier makes for a better - and more frequently played - game for my players.

I agree. It's nice to see this kind of innovation in our hobby. I am an avid D&Der and I also love the Warhammer lore. Been playing the tabletop for over a decade and I own 1st and 2nd edition RPG; this product that we have today is heads above awesome.

I would like to echo the sentiments from UniversalHead. I really hope you continue to contribute your skills and knowledge here Dave!

I would also like to add a question for UniversalHead: WHEN are you going to work up one of your impressive GM/Player aids for WFRP v3 (asks DeadeyeDick from BGG)??

Just finished with this adventure.

I liked it overall. Gregor Peirsson died to fatigue in my game while attacking, which was enjoyable by all.

One thing was the heroes found the temple way too early in the adventure, sneaking into the wine cellar and finding the temple. At that point I had 1/2 the cultists attack and then made it look like everyone was deeply shocked so the PCs felt they "got" most of the cultists, while resting later in the night, all hell broke loose.

Very Fun.

Great adventure Dave, now can you get your buddies to include better maps next time!!! Why have detailed descriptions of locations and then not include them on the map? Pure annoyance...

Hi !

I don't post a lot on the forums, but I had to jump in the bandwagon and congratulate you guys on the work on this product. I just finished reading the Core set and I'm absolutely impressed at almost everything. As with anything else, there's probably things I don't like and others I'll change, but that's only to be expected. The important thing is that the product is amazing and I absolutely loved it.

Specifically talking about the "Eye for an Eye" adventure:

I strongly believe in the power of the sample adventure we seem to typically get in a core book for an RPG. I almost never run this story for different reaons, but still I find it is very important because of one thing in particular: It sets the standard to be followed on how to write modules for the game. Of course GMs will tend to keep in their own "style" and whatnot, but in the end when I read someone else´s adventure, I will only have my own stories to compare with, other than the sample story in the GMs book. So you see, the sample story serves to set an example. I use these stories to see what the game designers came up with in order to use these wonderful new rules and mechanics they came up with. I mean, they've been working on these mechanics and stuff for months, so my money is on them to designing some great ways of using these rules. I also look for pacing guidelines, monster guidelines and a lot.

Well, you see, you've pretty much beat every expectation I had on the "Eye for an Eye" story. As mentioned above, a lot of detail is given and still, a lot of "wiggle room" is left for every GM to tweak it to his liking. Moreover, it gave me a very good idea on how to write stories for Warhammer Roleplay.

Congratulations and keep up the good work. I have high expectations on the new Campaign book that is brewing up based on this story !!

BTW, is there any plans on releasing an official "format" for people to write their own modules in ? It would be great if we had some sort of PDF or Word file with the right Fonts and stuff. RPGs are very driven by the community, so this kind of nice giveaways are fine ways of encouraging people to submerge into a system.

Vilrandir said:

Thanks - I take that as very high praise and, once again, it was something we had in mind (for it to cover the situation comprehensively but to leave plenty of room for complications) so it's especially pleasing to see that that came through.

Sinister said:

What a way to go!

One thing was the heroes found the temple way too early in the adventure, sneaking into the wine cellar and finding the temple. At that point I had 1/2 the cultists attack and then made it look like everyone was deeply shocked so the PCs felt they "got" most of the cultists, while resting later in the night, all hell broke loose.

Sounds cool - that's the sort of complication I hope the adventure allows for.

HedgeWizard said:

Working on it! Though it will be interesting to see if FFG have a GM's screen or something in the works for the near future. I hope they put a lot of thought into it, because I have never seen a GM screen done really well - ie, one with a lot of thought put into how it actually works during play, not one where they just throw tables on it and fill up the spaces. I'm looking at you v2 GM's screen ...

Sinister said:

I had the opposite happen in my game. My players never found the temple at all! They were suspicious of some of the staff and knew there was something strange with the painting, but they never thoroughly searched the rooms with hidden doors.

By the time dinner was over, one of them was too tired to continue searching (having been drugged) and the other fell asleep guarding Aschaffenburg's quarters. They awoke to the beastmen attacking the front gate, promptly went out to help only to find themselves vastly outnumbered (All but two of the guards had been drugged).

Then during the attack, the cultists finished their ritual on the roof, summoning the daemon. It was a crazy mess of beastmen, cultists, and clambering through the lodge attempting to outrun the daemon (who was far too powerful for them to handle).

One dead wargor, a leap out of the second story window (ending poorly for the Watchman), and an insane shadow wizard later...the players made their getaway via a horse from the stables.

Escaping the Chaos threat, but leaving the daemon infested lodge for another day...

One of my players claimed it was the most epic game he had played in a long while.

Bloodtyrant said:

I'm very glad to hear a story like this. My players come from a DnD background and when the get outnumbered they don't think "running" is a good option and then hold the GM responsible for their deaths. The strange thing is that the totally grok the concept of running in Call of Cthulhu. I don't think any set of heroes have a good chance against cultists, the demon, and the beastmen all at once. I'm very glad your group did the right thing.

I am going to run Eye for An Eye next weekend and I am kind of hoping that the Demon gets summoned and wreaks havoc. I really love that "failure" to stop the cult, while bad for the world, is really the cooler ending.

I can empathise that the failure of the cult can seem anti-climatical. However I think that if you don't 'reward' the players by allowing a skillful investigation to mitigate the worst of the cult activity then you do risk having them feel cheated.

If the party is geared for combat perhaps you could set a contingency whereby the beastman assault at the end is made more powerful if the investigation declaws the cult without much of a fight.

That way you can still "go out with a bang" whilst being able to tell the players that their skillful detective work prevented a much worse danger.

Happy new year!

Sinister said:

To be fair, I gave them a little aid in this. They would occasionally "Assess the Situation" to restore some of the massive fatigue and stress they were suffering. While "Assessing" I would give them a brief overview of their situation; and once the daemon had been summoned, I explained that their character's common sense told them that this was an unwinnable fight. Thankfully they took the hint.

One of the reasons I love "Assess the Situation". Very helpful to players and gm's alike.

Bloodtyrant said:

My group of adventurers is about to experience some of the same. To date we played the PDF adventure, and some home spun adventure of mine to flesh out combat and skills etc. We started Eye for an Eye the other day, i forced a game break after the Dinner event. Mainly as the adventurers have not been very thorough in their quest. Despite using a progress tracker, they players keep talking in weeks. I had to use some not so suttle hints that things are culminating faster than that. Dinner has been served, the players are drugged. Its gonna be dodgey now.

I can't help but feel that I have not done the best job in assisting the players with realizing their abilities, options etc. Time will tell. Despite that, my player group is extremely excited over the game, their characters, and all that.

Looking forward to more cool adventires from FFG.

Thank you for the advice Dave. I have been playing different roleplaying games for a long time, but I am just now starting to try to DM/GM. This adventure really has me excited about it. I think becoming a DM requires a difficult change in perspective, and I think your advice really pointed that out to me. So thanks again. I really apreciate it.

simpatikool said:

I wouldn't be tloo critical of your performance unless there's clearly something you feel you haven't done - I think if you've used the progress tracker you've been more than fair. I'm not sure what your players are like - but I suppose if I had a group who hadn't done much investigative play before I'd warn them to look for clues at te start - I don't know if that might have helped in your case.

It might be worth, if you think things could get really ugly, delaying the ritual by a night - perhaps the cloud cover prevents Morrslieb from shining brightly or something - you could then have the players wake up late the next day - feeling very groggy - but with a few more hours to figure out what is going on.

Alternatively - if they're a rather combat-orientated group - just hit them with everything and see how it goes.

jlok said:

You're welcome.

Another thing I think is useful is if the players foil the plot with ease, just save the bits they managed to avoid for later on.

That way they get the feeling of acheivement - whilst you get to employ some of the gaming material/ideas you prepped 'for free' at a later date.

So let's say they ace their investigation and neutralise the daemon and cultists with little effort and rally the remaining manor staff against the beastmen. That's good on them but a bit of shame because you didn't get to employ some of the cooler/scarier stuff in the game.

Well maybe then the next time the characters are in town, on a night when Morrslieb is full, another cult engineer a similar summoning, and this time there's much less time to prevent it.

Also bear in mind that most of the cultists are interested in self-preservation. As some other people have mentioned, if the investigation goes too well some members of the cult might seek to escape rather than fight the party. This leaves some enemies out there who might seek revenge against the party at a later date - or summon the daemon in some other fashion.