Hi all
I've been posting quite a bit lately so I thought I'd post a brief recap of our first V3 session, and some thoughts. Feedback welcome!
There are 4 players: a dwarf pit fighter, a bounty hunter, a bright wizard's apprentice, and a mercenary. I had them all - unintroduced - in the main room of the Red Moon Inn just outside of Ubersreik when Vern Hendrick rushes down the stairs, finds out from the innkeep that the coach from Altdorf hasn't yet arrived, and offers 25 silver (total) to anyone who is willing to go check on the coach and retrieve an important package. Of course the adventurers all cam forward, gruffly introduced themselves in their various bad accents (we had German, Russian and Scottish!) to Hendrick and each other, and set out on the road.
For the coach battle, I changed the antagonists to 4 goblins and 2 orcs, to give a bit of variety from the upcoming beastman battle. Our first V3 battle went quite well. One of the other players had a WFRP core set and helped me explain the dice pool system to everyone, and they picked it up pretty quickly. The players did tend to forget their fortune points and their stance meters, and in the heat of the battle - I was floundering about a bit myself - I pretty much forgot the party sheet, but apart from that it went relatively smoothly. The bounty hunter picked off 2 goblins with one Rapid Fire action, the bright wizard tried a quickcasting action, rolled up an extra 6 power, and let off a Flameblast that reduced the other 2 to cinders, to much hilarity (he's certainly far more effective than his old V2 grey wizard!)
While one of the orcs fought Rutger Abend the roadwarden, another met the dwarf and the mercenary in the trees and used a Crush 'Em Good action to deal the dwarf a devestarting blow that wiped out over half his wounds. "Oh," said the dwarf player, suddenly reminded of the viciousness of combat in WFRP. He retaliated with a Reckless Cleave that pretty much finished off the orc, which the mercenary then proceeded to do. The orc fighting the roadwarden saw which way the wind was blowing and ran off into the forest with a last arrow in his back.
It was over so fast I completely forgot about the orc calling for reinforcements, and it had been a nice introduction to combat so I left it at that. Klaus von Rothstein was then heard wihin the coach. I was a bit worried about how the social encounter system would go, but we all decided to give it a shot and to my surprise it was quite effective. I did reduce the length of the progress tracker to just 4 spaces instead of 8, otherwise it would have gone on way too long, but we enjoyed how everyone used their skills to try and convince the fat whiney merchant to cooperate. The dwarf tried to threaten him (Intimidate), Rothstein retailiated with a Who Do You Think You Are rant, the mercenary tried to be reasonable and logical (Charm), the bounty hunter tried to pretend he could see more goblins coming (Guile), and then finally the dwarf tried a hard Strength test and pulled the door off the coach, which when followed up by a successful Intimidate roll, put von Rothstein very suddenly and effectively in his place.
Back at the inn, there was a strange moment when the bounty hunter tried to hold out for more money from Hendrick, and the dwarf wanted to be honourable, and the two players (in character) started arguing, leading to the dwarf coshing the bounty hunter with his tankard. I increased the stress meter on the party sheet a couple of times but was at a bit of a loss what to do next; losing a stress and fatigue point each didn't seem to convince them of anything and they really had to roleplay it out of their system. Out of all the new mechanics, the party sheet seems to be the least effective.
Despite all this Hendrick offered them the job at Grunewald Manor (Sigmar knows why after this display!) and the next morning they set off. The beastman ambush at the gates went quite well. Again the wizard was very effective and toasted 2 ungors, though this time he picked up a temporary insanity - Manic Fervour, which given the circumstances was thematically perfect! The bounty hunter's Rapid Fire worked a treat again as well. It's a little worrying how effective this combination is at range, but perhaps they both just had good rolls. The beastman group that started at extreme range was completely ineffective, and I think the adventure starts these beastmen way too far away - they lost several wounds just trying to get vaguely in range, and were picked off by the time they got anywhere near the wagon.
We then entered the more investigative part of the adventure. Perhaps because it was past midnight now, the pace flagged a little at this point; I felt that the characters were a bit static, all sitting in their various locations 'waiting to be investigated', so I got Piersson to poke his head in to Aschaffenberg's room at one stage when an adventurer was there. The players had already pretty much decided he was 'the bad guy' because they saw him at the window of the manor - let's face it, 'the butler did it' isn't exactly a challenging supposition!
After chatting with everyone in the hospice, the adventurers all split up and checked out various parts of the estate, but their roleplaying experience really shone through at this point, throwing into sharp relief the fact that this is a pretty basic starting scenario. The mercenary went to the shrine and in no time at all had discovered the hammer. The wizard made a beeline for the bookcase in Aschaffenberg's room (which I'd only mentioned in passing when describing the room) and found the score marks on the floor. The bounty hunter went to the guard tower and chatted to the guards. Worst of all, the dwarf went to the library, and without so much as exchanging a word with Geizhals, after I'd described the room and the pattern on the rug, he immediately lifted back the rug and discovered the trapdoor! And no, these players haven't sneaked a peak at the scenario. Down he popped and found the chaos temple, and that's when we drew the session to a close.
At least discovering the temple doesn't 'ruin' things - they still have to find out who's corrupt and who isn't. Probably this will involve setting some kind of trap ...
So, finally, my thoughts. In general I was pleased with the new system. The jury is still out on the usefulness of the party sheet. I really like the way that NPCs and monsters require less stat-keeping, though some things still seem a bit fiddly. GMing the session was even more exhausting than usual, but that's no doubt due to the new learning curve. Henchmen groups seem so much weaker than individuals it's a bit weird. The PCs feel far more competent than usual starting characters, though obviously huge amounts of damage can be done to them in one blow, which is good (keeps them on their toes). The starting scenario is somewhat basic and obvious for experienced players, though I feel the number of different characters is quite a lot to handle for beginning GMs (I've been GMing for years and even I found it tricky to keep track of all the personalities, accents, motivations etc). I think the scenario would have benefitted from a few more events at the manor to introduce the NPCs rather than just having them described (if I'd had time I would have invented these myself).
Anyway, the players went away happy and thankfully no one said a word about returning to V2!
What I really need now, is this Gathering Storm adventure to come out quickly, because I'm going to run out of scenario after our next session and I really don't have the time to invent my own stuff. I really hope it's more challenging, and also introduces some new ideas to WFRP, because I think we've done variations on the 'cultists summoning a daemon' scenario way too many times now!
Thanks for reading - feedback most welcome!