Hello,

After our last gaming session one of my players handed me The Enemy Within books. They were lying at his place for many many years and have never seen gameplay. After reading them I've become quite eager to run them. Next week we'll be playing A Rough Night At The Three Feathers Inn which will give me some time to prepare for the Enemy Within.

I was wondering if anyone has tried this already and if so if there are any things I should be mindful of. Anything you could share in your experience is greatly appreciated.
In any case I'm looking for some feedback and idea's on how to handle it. It seems the first chapter is quite rough on the players, especialy with all their coach troubles. The part in Altdorf should be easy to do and the way to Bogehafen as well.

Once in Bögenhafen I think I'll have to do some serious preparation to keep things smooth.

Dont know how will be starting whit rough night...mistaken identity is pretty good enough as an intro to the campaign, and the confrontations are pretty packed up in few travelling (gaming)days, so maybe u should get carefull to not beat up the players to much, since the rest time isnt that much and dont know how this will cope whit the new ruleset.

After the first contact whit cultists maybe one thing to watch out closely is that the PC will make the funniest plans to try to catch them alive, so u should try to get prepared to make this realistically impossible!

Best campaign so far, so have fun whit that!! =)

Interesting, that's pretty much the same thing I did.

We started with an Eye for an Eye, then the players headed off to Karak Azgaraz to return Korden's Hammer. During the journey I ran A Rough Night at the Three Feathers, the players had a blast with that. They were intent on getting a on the Initiates of Morr, three spooky guys walking into an Inn with a corpse. One of the first OOC comments was: "They're carrying cocaine stuffed in a body." They would not leave the Initiates alone for a second, which made it hard to schedule Ursula's activities. But in the end they got side-tracked by the lover's feud.

Taking the weapons away from them and accepting the Graf's judgement after the bodies were found was also quite chaotic. They were are all a hair's breadth from defying Maria-Ulrike openly. Especially troublesome if you have dwarfs and elfs in the party which might feel the Empire's laws don't really concern them. But in the end cooler minds prevailed, but it helped reiterating that Maria was related to an Elector Count, her murder/capture would not go unpunished.

Mistaken Identity was a walk in the park and the players just flowed through the story naturally. I did some changes and added some additional activities in Altdorf to prepare for a tie in with The Gathering Storm (which I plan to run after Bögenhafen). I also changed Adolphus and used Ursula from The Three Feathers, just to throw them for a loop.

The main problem in my experience was that combat was too easy. You really need to step it up, especially after the 16 Beastmen + Daemon the player's face in an Eye for an Eye, 6 mutants (4 of which are heavily wounded) don't really measure up. The fight with the Bounty Hunter and the 50% chance of the oil not catching fire or it catching fire on the thugs was just completely anti-climatic. One of the players said: "Man, this is hilarious. It's like watching goblins fight!" I'd personally would make the fire more effective were I to run it again. Also the bounty hunter dying was a bit tricky, as the players were aiming to capture her. And 3e doesn't have a critical hit table the GM can manipulate. Fortunately the Bright Wizard in the party did a Flameblast on her and got 4 hammers, 4 boons and a sigmar's comet and +4 power for additional damage. Then he was like, "Oh, wait I didn't mean to kill her" with his character 3 deep into reckless. "Sorry mate, it seems you went a wee bit overboard."

It was still a very fun session though.

Currently they've just arrived in Bögenhafen.

Thanks a lot for this insight Lexicanum!

We're just ending an Eye for an Eye tomorrow and with two dwarves among the crew I can see them heading towards the Karak already

Very curious that our groups will be following more or less the same path. Unfortunatley I only gather with this group for 4 hrs of gaming so the games are a bit slow.

'll let you know what happens at the Inn, how did you do the armwrestling stuff there? Another thing that I was wondering is how to pace it. I'm thinking on taking the timing literaly but on the other end perhaps I should move faster trough the events.

For The enemy within. I gues I'll have to beef up the muties then, I think I'll use some inspiration from the Tome of Corruption for additional nastyness. I'm also thinking on cutting some corners on the road. Switching Adolphus and Ursula seems like a good thing to do.

I think at least the first two scenario's are very doable in this edition, certainly when my players get a feel for the dice.

Keep us posted on Bögenhafen.

I've ran the campaign twice over the years. System-wise it will work perfectly with 3rd edition, so you're covered there. The best advice I can give you is: Be Prepared. There are a lot of moving parts and behind the scenes stuff going on throughout the campaign, most notably the second half. As long as you have a good sense of the overall story you will be fine. If not, you may find yourself scrambling a bit during play.

Don't get wrapped up in balancing combat too much. WHFRP has never really been about that. You might beef up a few encounters, but don't pull your hair out over it. Lexicanum said one of his players commented "Man, this is hilarious. It's like watching goblins fight!" The game has always had a black sense of humor and in my experience with it the fights that don't go quite right are the most memorable.

There are a LOT of great opportunities to RP some oddball characters as the GM. Have fun with that and you'll really bring it alive. It's a fantastic campaign. Good luck!

Oh, by the way, Rough Night At The Three Feathers is one of the most challenging adventures I've ever ran in my 25 years of roleplaying. Right next to Power Behind The Throne.

Count Zero said:

Do you mean challenging for GM to run or challenging for the Players?

valvorik said:

Challenging for the GM. In both adventures there are timelines for a LOT of different NPCs and you need to know where everyone is at all times. They will go about their business regardless, sometimes, of what the players are doing so you need to be on point. In Rough Night the timeline is spread out over one night and in PBTT the timelines are spread out over a longer period but the idea is the same.

I shied away from Rough Night when I was running 1st edition but decided to tackle it with 2nd edition.

captaincutlass said:

Our group generally meets for 4 hours, but at times we have longer sessions. Last session was an aberration though, for example a Rough Night at the Three Feathers took us two sessions to complete.

The arm wrestling stuff I handled as a competitive opposed check. So Bruno was rolling an opposed check against the player's strength. Then the player was rolling an opposed check against Bruno's strength. It worked out that both had Str 4, so the opposed difficulty check was 2 Challenge die for both. In a competitive check you basically compare the successes of the two parties, so if Bruno got 2 successes and the player 3 successes then the player wins by 1.

So based on that I set up a tracker (event, 2 green, event, 2 red, event) , green side was the player, red side was the NPC's. After each roll depending on where the tracker was I'd describe that as one guy moving the other's hand closer to the table. Until finally the dwarf piled in some fortune points and doubled his cash with a handy win.

As regards pacing, you probably wouldn't want to take the timing literally. What I did was basically use the time as an upper limit, if you will. So if there's 15 minutes between events I would let the players mess around for 15 minutes real life time be it in or out of character and at the 15 minute mark I'd move to the next event. This kept a fast pace and prevented the party from bogging down trying to solve one bit. Plus one of the main draws of the adventure is that things are happening around you, a lot of them out of your control!

The other part is that in some cases some events don't elicit much of a response. Like the couple walking into the Inn and going upstairs. My players couldn't have cared less. So I only waited a couple of minutes before advancing to the next event. So in summary, if there's nothing going on advance to the next event, or have some NPC interact with them (Ursula, Bruno or the thief) If they are engaged in something, give them the real time equivalent in the time line for it or around 15 mins for the longer parts.

I did make my own timeline for the events, with snippets of info for each relevant NPC in that particular Event. You definitely want to come prepared for this scenario, but it's pretty cool.

Count Zero said:

It may be similar in complexity, but it's nowhere near the sheer size of PBtT. I had real trouble GMing PBtT, whereas Rough Night was no trouble at all. Part of the problem is perhaps that my players, despite being very experienced roleplayers, have a tendency to passively wait for adventure to come to them. In PBtT, where they need to look people up, that's a problem. In Rough Night, everything happens under the same roof.

valvorik said:

Last night I had a very strange session. Two of the three heroes died in the finale of Eye for an eye. I must admint that they were still suffering from the beastmen but the plot did them in. The fourth player didn't show up so I had his hero on an errand.

They stayed the whole day outside of the mansion, only visiting the kitchens, dorm and hospice in the building. The things they did do outside were not impressive. One of them found the hammer, cleaned it and left it there without a word to anyone. They ended up getting drugged, going to sleep and missing the whole thing until it was too late. They rolled abysmal as well troughout the evening.

I'm afraid in this light The Enemy Within is not an option. I guess it is too challenging for these players. My other group ran trough the thing like a train, I had to speed up events before they uncovered it all too soon

I could try to adapt the scenarios to a more linear approach but I'm not sure how much work this will be...

Arr, this keeps me in low spirits! Where's me rhum?

captaincutlass said:

My group (now halfway through Eye For An Eye) is also suffering from a lack of initiative. They've only visited the dorm, hospice, kitchen and coach house. One player insisted we jump straight to dinner (which would have had the obvious result of them not getting any clues and probably getting drugged), then spent some time looking around outside on his own, but didn't talk to anyone. He did find the herb garden, but despite his Nature Lore and good Int, didn't recognise any plants.

Fortunately two players got hurt by the first beastmen attack, so they immediately had to visit the Hospice, discovered the doctor was creepy and had that strange vegetable smell, and heard some of the dwarf's ranting. (I forgot to give them any rant concerning the hammer, so they're probably not going to find it.)

Two players decided they'd earned a drink after their hard work with the luggage, and went to the kitchen. Nice opportunity to have them face an angry cook that tries to keep them out of the wine cellar. Then they went for the coach house, chatted with Albrecht who showed them around the garden (except the herb garden, so they had a clue that something might be up there). They really liked Albrecht (the other two stable guys were rather tired and sleepy). Then they went back to the kitchen, where one offered to cut vegetables, and the other used that distraction to sneak into the wine cellar where he stole some booze and found the secret passage. I also had the other guy notice the cook putting some vegetable-smelling stuff on the venison.

Personally, I think you can't be too generous with clues that the venison is drugged. With everybody drugged, they don't stand much of a chance. After the existence of the secret passages, it's probably the most important clue there is. (And since nobody in my group can read, the note wasn't any good.)

captaincutlass said:

My group missed most of the clues in TEW. Still a fun campaign, though.

There are times when you have to help the group along, and the Eye for an Eye information for managing the investigation suggests as much:

When the investigation token reaches the first event space on the track, direct the party towards an as-yet- undiscovered overt clue, such as the blasphemous books in the library or the painting itself.

I was also having a slow start with my players, with them feeling there wasn't a rush to solve the problem. Taking it slowly to ingratiate themselves with their hosts and the people around them. All very logical things to do given the circumstances known to them. So as a GM we have to give them a wake up call, that will make them sprint into action. Showing them the painting or the blasphemous books generally does it, as it clearly shows there's something fishy going on.

Same thing with TEW, if they miss Kastor's body that's pretty bad. So you just have to make sure they find it and not rely on a roll or anything. Likewise with the goblin in Bögenhafen and the trip down the sewers.

You know, I find that a reminder up front (before the session even starts) sometimes does wonders. I'm playing with some people new to RPGs and some who have only played D&D; the first time we did an investigation-heavy scenario, I was worried about it because it might not have been obvious to my players what they were supposed to "do." I just reminded them by saying, "Over the course of the next few sessions, there's going to be some investigation. I'd like to handle it this way..." (then I proceeded to give examples about how to direct me about what they wanted to do and how to make relevant checks, but at the same time, I gave them a sense of the kinds of things that they had the option of doing.) I reminded them that thoroughness was usually beneficial.

When I ran Eye, in fact, they did beautifullythey stopped the ritual well before it had begun, and were so thoughtful about their defenses during the beastmen encounter that nobody was even seriously hurt.

If you're worried that'd make it too easy, you might mix it in with a conversation about battles and suchthat way they won't know right away what they'll be looking at. But I find that you can teach your group to do better easily enough.

Thanks for your insights everyone. I'll keep them in mind with our next scenario but I'll probably fiddle some with the event sequesnce in The Enemy Within.