Hello,

I want to finally start the Enemy within campaign, now that there is so much material for the 3rd ed. out, that conversion shouldn't be any problem anymore. But I also want to play one of my favourite adventures: Winds of Change from the Winds of Magic Set. So I thought, why not start with Mistaken Identity more or less like it's written. Plus: One of the players gets the message that his/her relative/brother/childhood friend who went of to learn the art of magic in Altdorf (Hermann Gratz) went missing. So the players get some double-incentive to travel to Altdorf.

Arriving at Altdorf (after having discovered the body of Lieberung and the inheritance notification) they encounter the bounty hunter and the Cultists of the Purple hand. And Johannes too who proposes to them a ship ride to Bögenhaven departing on the morning after Geheimnisnacht. I think the players arrive the day before Geheimnisnacht, so that they have one and a half day to find Gratz and solve the mystery of Schmutzplatz.

But what is to do with the bounty hunter and the cultists in the meantime? Does anybody have suggestions to whether or not my idea of combinig the two adventures could work? Or suggestions regarding the implementation of yet another Tzeentch Cult into the TEW campaign? Or should I change the Broken Wheel cultists into Red Crown Cultistst? Would that make any sense in the end? Or do you think one shouldn't just mind at all? Or just any comments, thoughts, ideas, questions.

All would be very welcome!

Thanks -- korknadel

What to do with the cultists in the meantime:

Well, they need 8 apprentice wizards, and it needs to be done before Geheimnisnacht.

Have Gratz be the first apprentice wizards that gets abducted. And from time to time, let the party know about others that get abducted as well.

They can't very well kidnap 8 apprentices in one night, this ain't Gone in 60 Seconds

However, merging the cult with another seems like a good option as well. Maybe use one of the 2 as a diversion. As soon as the party works through it, they realise that the main reason for this plot was, to delay them, so that the Broken Wheel had the time to finish their blasphemous ritual in peace.

I would actually put this in after SoB, and have it be the test for the groups wizard to ascend to Acolyte career.

Herr Blitzen gives the assignment. But while uncovering it, you could a note linking the cult in Altdorf to Ertelka?

Thank you for both your ideas!

I already started Winds of Change with my group, but since they are very keen on character motivation and involvement, they didn't really get hooked by the investigation on Schmutzplatz. It was like: "My high elf envoy wants to find a ship that takes him back to Ulthuan, and after three people told him, that they haven't seen Gratz anywhere, why should he care about those stupid people in the Dove of Love and their eggs?" As problems increased we decided to stop, create an new group of characters that don't have such a lot of sophisticated agendas and start once again from the beginning.

But since the players want strong motivation to get involved into the adventure I thought Mistaken Identity would be the best starting point. But I still don't want to miss out on those great adventures for 3rd ed. with all their fun material. So I came across the idea of merging them with TEW. Just so that you know why I want to do it and what I hope to achieve with it.

In that regard I find Nisses' suggestion the most promising. After the Bögenhaven plot the players will surely be eager to deal with any strange cases arising in Altdorf once they are there and find out about it. And there is a great opportunity to link the Broken Wheel conspiracy to the general schemes of Chaos to bring down the empire. I'm quite positive that the Etelka Herzen connection would be quite easy to accomplish, and it would be a great opportunity to show the players how weak and uneffective Karl Franz really is.

Since I very much like the other adventures of 3rd ed. I'm thinking about smuggling them into the campaign too. Übersreik (Edge of Night) could be trading stop during death on the Reik, and with some slight relocating the Grunewald Lodge could find itself on the way from Bögenhaven to the river barge. There is also some chance that the mining town of Hugeldal is moving to the banks of some major river. And I really like the first three parts of Gathering Storm, so perhaps I can cut them out and, with some changes, paste them on to Death on the Reik (or Empire in Flames?).

What do you think? I'm sure grateful for any other suggestions and ideas or sharing of experiences.

Thanks a lot korknadel

Now I'm completely hit by megalomania!

Imagine this campaign:

Mistaken Identity leads to Shadows over Bögenhaven. After that the group flees into the Grey Mountains:

There they encounter the Lichemaster (1st edition scenario). After that they have one or other reason to go back into the Empire and stumble across some mining incidents (http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_foros_discusion.asp?efid=165&efcid=3&efidt=442969) in Hugeldal (where they also have to face the Horror in Hugeldal), which lead them directly to the Edge of Night in Übersreik.

At this point they have learned that there is more than just one Enemy Within and that Chaos lurks at the borders of the Empire (Grey Mountains). In Übersreik they also get some insight in the rotten politics of the Empire.

Now they climb on the barge to experience Death on the Reik, during wich adventure they at some point hit Altdorf and are blown away by the Winds of Change. This also gives a great opportunity to show them the state of things in the Capitol.

I'm still lacking Carrion up the Reik, so I'm not quite sure, how to lead the group from Castle Wittgenstein to Middenheim. In any event I might squeeze in Grapes of Wrath, since I really like this mini-adventure.

After Power Behind the Thrones they players are sent to Kislev, where they smell Something Rotten (I will probably change the module, but I still qwant to use the material). There they realize that the Storm of Chaos is brewing.

From Kislev they are sent back to Talabheim to chaperone some noblewoman. But they have to find out that Talabheim is stricken by some plague and that some crazy ratthings take advantage of the civil war within the Empire. Before they can return to Altdorf they have to deal with the Terror in Talabheim.

Finally they enter the Empire in Flames (or at War, I'm not decided yet). If it comes to EiF, I might use Gathering Storm: I would relocate Stromdorf to some fitting place in the Empire and use the lighning stones as some kind of a key to the Chaos Gate in the dwarf hold or something like that.

All in all, I think that's way too much, but to me it looks so great and huge and epic .

And I don't know yet where Eye for an Eye might fit in.

Sounds like a fun run. However, you may not want to overdo it.

I can't count the number of campaigns we've played that after a while died a quiet death because of summer-vacations, New Year's Holidays, other games, other roleplays, work, etc. etc. (And after 2 months of non-activity it is very hard to really start things up again)

Is this your first attempt at doing a larger campaign, or first attempt at DMing in general, or ... ?
Maybe a better question is: How well do you know your player-group, are they likely to see things through for a very long time?

For the moment I'm trying to keep it down to adventures that can be finished up in 6-8 sessions, with Gathering Storm being the longest so far.
Both from a player & a GM standpoint, it's nicer to have something you've finished up, rather than an epic tale that you undertook, but somewhere halfway the second arc got abandoned.

The problem with large campaigns, is not to make them fit each other, but the real-time it takes to complete them. People move, find new friends, finds love..., moves with their work etc... endless list! Which is why I think 1 year is the maximum time a campaign can span.

I'm quite aware of the fact, that this probably won't turn out well. But I really like the idea of it. I'm not new to GMing, but I'm no GM-hero either. And I already have some problems with my group at the moment. So I don't think that my current group would survive a campaign like that. On the other hand: they sabotaged our attempt to play a single adventure, because they didn't feel enough motivation to get involved with what was going on. That's why I came up with a campaign, because campaigns provide much more character motivation than one shots. But I fear they will sabotage the campaign too, because they are very much into indie RPGs and theorize a lot. They always claim to like oldtimey stuff without too much fussing about forget about complex rules and background and storytelling: here's the dungeon, here's the adventure: let's jump! but when it comes to Warhammer which is in a way very oldtimey, they prefer complex motivation and highly sophisticated characters, it seems to me.

So I think I will just start with Mistaken Identity and wait how it turns out. After all I don't have to follow this crazy plan, I can just abandon TEW after Bögenhafen and play a series of single adventures or omit the extra adventures and just continue TEW as written. For now they are more or less in awe of TEW from what people talk abput it and because it always sounds exactly like what they want. If it doesn't turn out well, they can blame me as a bad GM or they can start theorizing about how deficient TEW is. I'm very much looking forward to that

But nonetheless, I couldn't resist posting this mega plan of a campaign, just for the pleasure of looking at it .

Spivo said:

Yeah, we've been running a campaign with the exact same players for about 18 months, but we never set out to do it that way. We've never committed to anything more than playing the next adventure, and I've never planned for further than the end of the current adventure, except in only the vaguest way.