The cards in this game actually are a great random adventure / encounter generator in themselves. Take the location card dec shuffle it up and draw three random locations. Take the item dec shuffle it up and draw a random item card. Whala you have the setting and goal, add some NPC's ( picking a couple random career cards could do this for you) and some monsters and your good to go. If you want the bad guys connected to a larger organization the same could be done with the nemesis card dec.

Once you have those pieces laid out connecting them should be fairly simple. If you want to get fancy or don't like to wing it add some canned dialog to set the scene and provide the hooks. This system lends itself well to free form games and letting PC's go off on whatever tangent they want. If they flounder at the hooks or can't decide what to do just ratchet up that party tension meter until they get the hint.

My group is getting ready to go from Eye for an Eye to The Gathering Storm, and after reading TGS there are just so many places this adventure can be expanded upon or used as a stepping stone to additional adventures which is what got me thinking of how to easily add in additional content on the fly. Anyone else tried anything like this yet?

That's actually a good idea. I'm playing from time to time simple little sessions with my gf and I'm always struggling to find ideas for some short adventure. That may be a good start.

You could also do the following :

Draw a career card to generate a NPC. Draw 1 insanity (y'know... almost all NPCs in WH are a bit insane ) or a wound card and turn it over for critical (an old war wound or something).

Isn't anyone thinking about a way to generate random investigation plot with this method? My gf loves to investigate in this game (she really liked the an Eye for an Eye adventure) and try to find clues that point to "the culprit".

Silverwave said:

I do a lot of adventures with just my wife as well. I actually wrote out an entire D&D 4e Eberron campaign for us to do, its been great to play but putting it together was a nightmare. Also, it is very railroaded. A lot goes into putting together a D&D adventure and it is hard to free form.

I like your insanity idea, you could also do the same with effects and even critical wounds. I'll have to mess around and see if I can find a couple consistent numbers of different types of cards to combine for different adventure sizes.

Speaking of adventures - que rant - , and this goes to books in general for WFRP 3e but for the example I am refering to The Gathering Storm. The editing is bad, actually it sucks. Some people don't have time to read the whole 90 pages before running part of it. But when you don't tell me something I need to know for the first adventure out of four until the second it can totally put the GM in a corner.

Great idea Congzilla.A very easy way to play especialy when You don't have too much time to think of an adventures - You're building them on the session.

A nice idea for putting together a quick adventure. I'd also recommend throwing in stuff from the awesome Warhammer Random Treasure Generator ; the strangeness of many of its items make excellent plot hooks.

Congzilla said:

Hah. I can't imagine not reading the whole thing first! I read the whole thing a few times, in fact, and then have re-read each individual section twice, taking notes, before I run that section. I can't stand having to stop the flow of narrative to look details up, but at the same time, I don't want to forget anything cool. But maybe that's just me being crazy.

Llanwyre said:

Hah. I can't imagine not reading the whole thing first! I read the whole thing a few times, in fact, and then have re-read each individual section twice, taking notes, before I run that section. I can't stand having to stop the flow of narrative to look details up, but at the same time, I don't want to forget anything cool. But maybe that's just me being crazy.

I am the same way, but the older I get the less time I have to do it. It would be nice if the printed adventures had a synopsis and flow chart. More maps wouldn't hurt either I am having trouble visualizing the layout for the Garden of Morr section for example.

I really feel the same way about GTS. It's a great adventure but it's edited in a way that you need to read it all few times to remember every bits and pieces and not miss important details while playing. Unfortunatly, I'm not sure I can afford the time (nor do I really want to) for a second read through. That's sad. I don't know how it will turn up at the table :S

Llanwyre said:

I recently found my dad's notes for the very first few adventures (in a different system) that I played (with our family, and he GMed), 26 years ago. He was extremely meticulous, photocopied maps, then hand copied parts of them to add extra notes, so it was almost impossible to forget any detail (I still remember he did forget one detail, though).

I'm usually way more sloppy than that, but lately I've been trying to prepare a bit more notes too.

A "good" GM in the WFRP world should have interest and knownledge in european history and it helps that some of the PCs walking that way too.

I feel that the WFRP 3rd ed. is abit like the LOTR movies. You need to have some knowledge of the MIddle Earth universe and medieval europe, to fully enjoy the whole world and it's inhabitants. Having the 2nd ed books and a good sized bookshelf of 11th - 16th century goes along way.

The 3rd ed. books, so far, are not of the best construction wise. But all good aventures takes a few reading throughs, just like a script has to be read and understood by and the director and the cast.

Alot of the comments on this forum feels very much like boardgaming feedback. Roleplaying is not a quick dice role and combat fix. It is improvised theatre for the PCs and prepared directing from the GM.

chrull said:

Well it isn't board game feedback. It is players with careers, wives, and kids feedback. You have time to read the book three times and study European history, super, I don't. This thread was about people like me having a quick workable system to throw things together on the fly.

A "good" GM is one that is fair, and puts on a game people want to keep coming back to play.

Maybe I'm too anti regarding the random side, but it tends to become too much of dungeoncrawling, if nothing is at least a little effort have gone into the adventure.

I'm not judging anyone for enjoying any kind of game, or the way anyone is GMing. But it takes very little to give a golden lining to a roleplaying session.

I believe the best way of putting together a "random" scenario piece is to be openminded towards the PCs and use, for those who have no time to read, movies as a source. My PCs enjoy recognizing a certain scene/movie and can elaborate around that.

I doesn't have too be a fantasy/historical movie. As long as a scene is interesting and it might work with the group/adventure that you are GMing.

I usually write down a few lines after I've seen a film. My notes have become like a library of small scenario paths that I always keep at hand. Especially when the brain breaks down late at night.

If roleplaying gaming becomes too much of a "normal" gaming (boardgaming/videogaming), I believe it loses it's purpose. It is the interaction that fuels the tention, fun and award. I let my PCs run alot of the story on there own and just try to keep up with them.

So maybe I'm spoiled with a good group that give me all the fillers to me.

For me reading the adventure threw once with some minor notes of how I want to tie things together is usually enough. This random adventure concept the way I use it is more to fill the gaps of when the PCs go off and do something totally unplanned. Say it is the trip from the manor in Eye for an Eye to Stormdorf, and they decide that they want to go check out some random set piece I just added into my description of the scenery as flavor. Well now it needs to be more than flavor it needs to be explorable. This random system allows me to throw together a location and encounter in minutes instead of trying to railroad them into just continuing forward.

Congzilla said:

Yes but instead of drawing the cards random, I just pick one I feels belong to the "encounter" and it does not take many seconds for me to imagine what could be inhabiting the place.

It is also a great way to add some hooks to other adventures quite easily.

But it is a good idea.

chrull said:

A good GM in WFRP (or any RPG) makes the game fun. Whether that involves historical knowledge is entirely a matter of taste.

Too much background information can turn out to be a trap. An example from my personal experience: I love the Traveller setting. I own a ton of books with background material (especially the very excellent GURPS Traveller books, but also older material), and at some point I managed to convince my group to give it a try. But I was so focused on the background material, figuring out as much detail about the planets they visited as possible, and not contradicted any canon, that I complete forgot to make it fun. My group now hates Traveller, and that's my fault.

On the other hand, some of out most fun sessions were when we were playing WFRP (The Enemy Within), got completely off-track, and I completely improvised a couple of sessions where they visited a college in Altdorf and got a bit more involved with the Red Crown than was originally intended. I'm sure I contradicted lots of WFRP canon all over the place, but they had a great time, and that's what counts.

Then again, historical knowledge can also be a source of inspiration. I've also done a couple of fun sessions (in some Steampunk game) after reading a lot of stuff on the late 19th Century on Wikipedia (especially concerning the Congo, Morton Stanley, and the legend of the Mokele Mbembe). But once you're at the table, let go of the facts, and focus on the fun.