I am about to run a campaign (Gathering Storm) and working on an into adventure that brings the characters together and sets them on the path the main campaign.

One of the characters is a road warden and I plan on using this character as a focus for the party and to guide them to the start of the campaign. I was wondering if there was any source material about the road wardens that can help me with this task. What is their command structure like? Should the player get a wage for his career? I am pretty new to this setting so any help with the workings of the empire would be a boon.

Thanks.

Shades of Empire, although written for 2nd ed, contains a good chapter on Roadwardens, and various other factions within the Empire.

It is available to download, and is a great source for fluff. It should cover most, if not all your questions.

Alp

A simple way to have the Road Warden becoming an adventurer type recruiting some help could be from a side job given to him by his hierarchy. He is pulled off of road patrol duty for that assignment and given a purse to recruit some help and get cracking on the "mission", whatever it is. I did that with a Sigmar Initiate in my group.

The "mission" could be in the line of (for TGS) : the merchand guild asks help to an Ubersreik official friend, seeking news from Florian Weshler (intro plot options of TGS), whom in turn asks the "military & police" Captain. Not willing to spend much ressources on that, a single Road Warden is dispatched (as a Road Warden, he holds Empire's authority). The merchand drops some coins so that the Road Warden can hire some help (and get paid from it too). Then, they head toward Stromdorf. If your group is more of a vilain types (scoundrels, thugs, unsavory types), that may not work very well

My group played an Eye for an Eye just before TGS, but the Sigmar Initiate wasn't there. He still heard of it and though that mercenaries (or whatever they are) that destroy chaos cult and Empire enemies are worth recruiting.

Can you tell us (if you know / if they've been created already) what characters your players will be playing? Then we could come up with some more specific ideas. Also, do you know where your characters come from? Even if that just means 'the town', 'the countryside' or 'a big city'.

The characters were created but not fleshed out yet. That is the next thing on the agenda. I hadn't read any of TGS before the characters were created; I was potentially going to use some of the material in that to help shape their background. After reading the first half of the adventure, I don't see any reason I needed to have waited for them to finish this step.

The players are a human male road warden, a human male bright wizard, and a human female thief. There is also another interested player who I don't have a character yet from.

I already have an Idea for getting them together. Going to suggest that the thief is currently living in/from Grunburg and has gotten into a bit of trouble there. A shopkeeper knows she stole from him, but can't prove anything. Since she has the specialization "Appear Innocent" the town bailiff doubts her guilt, but wants to appease the shopkeeper. As a compromise, she has agreed to go visit her relatives on a small farm to the south (near Auerswald) for at least a few weeks to give the shopkeeper some time to cool down.

The bailiff asks his friend the road warden to escort her. They will find the farm abandoned and looted. There will be some kind of hook here to lead them to Auerswald. About 5 miles outside of Auersrwald it will start to pour rain. Shortly thereafter they will find smoking wagon and some dead guys and the next member of the group, an unconscious bright wizard. Beastmen have looted the wagon and murdered the passengers. They are long gone and the heavy rain has washed away what little tracks are left. Time permitting, I will play this out solo for the bright wizard, else I will just describe what happens to him and have the other players find him knocked out in the mud with a random critical wound (just for fun). He decided to start out flat broke so this scenario works perfectly. I kind of wanted to make that decision more meaningful.

From Auerswald, I will probably use the merchant ring hook to bring them to Stromdorf and start the campaign.

I had just asked about the road wardens so I could portray their command structure/duties more accurately. I am having trouble finding a place that sells the .pdf version of Shades of Empire as that looks exactly like what I wanted.

You could try here;

http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product_info.php?products_id=64674

You may also want to shop around as you may find it cheaper.

The chapters in the Road Warden section are;

PLAYERS SECTION - Purpose, History, Structure, Goals and Motives, Symbols and Signs, Membership, Recruitment, Member Benefits and Responsibilities.

GM'S SECTION - Secrets of the Road Wwardens, Allies, Enemies, Sample Mentor, Sample Location - Far Riders' Keep, Using Oranisations, Plot Hooks.

The section on Road Wardens stretches from p113 to P125. All fluff apart from one 2ed Stat Block for the Sample Mentor.

Hope this helps,

Alp

Thanks, just what I was trying to find!! Could only find the physical book online. The only .pdf verisons I could find were not ones you could buy.

midnightphil said:

I haven't got around to reading my copy of TGS yet, so I can't really comment on the hooks in the adventure, but it sounds like you've put a decent amount of thought into creating your group. It sounds like a really interesting set up.