Hello, GMs.

The following description is my first attempt at running a campaign for my friends, after ten glorious years of fighting beside them through the dungeons of Hero Quest, Warhammer Quest, 1st and 2nd edition WFRP.

It is a Deadwood themed civ-builder using the 2nd edition Border Princes source book. The setting is a reasonably secluded, resource rich valley in the northern end of the border princes (a week plus south of the wissenland border), in a camp run by sketchy woodsmen types, intending to strike it rich, evade the long arm of the imperial law, and have property without the greedy landlord breathing down their backs. The map is unfortunately divided into blatant zones of varying degrees of difficulty, initially with a finite population of monster groups dispersed around the valley, with one major entrance in or out, guarded by a chokepoint. A large lake with a small island at its centre forms the heart of the valley. The main camp is set in forest and hills in the north east quadrant. Swamps and marshlands lie in the south east quadrant. Deserts and badlands in the south west, and grasslands/rolling hills in the north west. Obviously penned in by mountains and hills. Each zone is divided by a river flowing into the central lake, along the main compass points. Not very original or 'natural', but so far it has worked out pretty well, which is half the battle i guess. Places of interest like Khemri ruins, temple ruins, etc, are added for flavour, each with some kind of guardian or guardian horde. One small band of greenskins, and a smaller band of beastmen were stranded when winter snows blocked the main pass into the valley, to provide some sources for raids once the players arrive in the camp. 10 mutants have also taken up residence in the swamp, and have been blessed/cursed with an interesting array of mutations.

Players roll on a modified nationality table (based off the Prince nationality table) to determine where they are from, and if from a non-empire locale, (norsca, kislev, border princes, bretonnia) they roll their starting career off the appropriate table. Once they have their starting career, they are allowed to max it out, and gain all trappings associated with the career. They are then given an amount of gold based on their initial career (peasant classes getting less gold, nobles getting the most, etc), and the option of either getting two advances into one of their official career exits, or two advances from ANY basic career they want. Finally, they are allowed to pick a trade skill of their choice, and gain common quality tools/supplied necessary for the practice of their trade. This impresses upon the players that this valley is a new beginning for them, and are given gold to equip themselves for a lengthy period in the wilderness, weeks from the nearest 'civilized' settlement, and a trade so that they can be useful to their new neighbours (if they so desire).

I have probably gone overboard creating tables and house rules for all manner of things: weather conditions, weather effects on players/terrain/clothing/health, construction/gathering rules, random attack rules for the camp itself and the chokepoint into the valley. The camp starts with a finite number of guards (less than 20) including sergeants and a captain to act as shields against the tougher foes (and to prevent all my hard work from evaporating in one bad attack). The Boss NPC sends a recruiter back into civilization to gather more prospective settlers. These waves of settlers arrive back at the camp every 12-14 days, with two days of 'rest' before setting out again. I have slightly altered this rule since the game started, and will allow for small groups of stragglers to be drawn into the camp (reasoning being a valley this 'ideal' is not going to be void of human life, even if it does turn out to be horribly, horribly cursed..). The reinforcements arriving at such a slow rate has been great so far, as every death of a camp NPC is a significant loss, and it has helped immerse my players into this game.

Combat is the standard fare. I allow NPCs within visual range of any of the players to use the critical hit chart, while this draws combat out a lot more, it inflicts minor/major injuries on npcs that affect how they work around camp, how effective the camp/choke point drives off attackers, etc.

Camp population wise, there is the Leader, and his lieutenant, a handful of generic labourers, a halfling running a Flophouse, and a handful of guards dispersed between the chokepoint and the camp itself. The main player characters are a Woodsman, kislevite outlaw, and a Barber Surgeon. Of those npcs, i have since allowed some to become henchmen for the PCs. These henchmen are given a basic profile from the Armoury book, and the players have been given the option when spending their XP to either do so on their own character, or direct their xp over to their henchmen to gain some profiles. One of my players was complaining i was giving out too much Xp, and that he was levelling up way to fast. This npc option, as well as a reduced amount of xp per session has satisfied them.

I have created this campaign in such a way that i only really have to roll dice at the start of a session to determine small things like weather, which place gets attacked, if any, what is doing the attacking, etc. Otherwise, i let the players go off and see what they do. Eg. The woodsman player noticed how the chokepoint kept getting attacked, so he decided he was going to help set up a wall to fortify their position. He takes a handful of camp labourers and sets up a logging camp in the bush, and has now built most of a wall (lacking only the gate) which has increased the life expectancy of the guards by a significant margine. Egeg. The Barber Surgeon, has developed an interest in heretical physiology, studying (as discretely as possible) the beastmen and mutants that wander into/attack the camp. So far, he has not been discovered. This method, while taking up a ton of time to create, has opened up some interesting plot lines, riddles and even a mystery.

As you can probably tell, this has not been a game for the action/speed oriented. We have been playing this campaign for two years now, and due to our schedules, we have only gotten to approximately In-game day 12. So the next wave of reinforcements haven't even arrived yet. Each 2-4 hour session we have, usually completes between 2-6 in-game hours. A grueling, slogging pace, not for the faint of heart. I know the main cause for this arises from two separate plot lines. The Woodsman off doing his thing, and the Barber Surgeon off doing his. Everything clicks along well when they are together, but when they branch off, the slog begins. I have been discretely funnelling them together to move things along a bit, but other than that, things are going well, and the players (all two of them right now) are happy.

I hope that wasn't too rambling. I just wanted to share the obsession we've been stuck in for the past two years. heheh.