Hi there,

I have the opportunity to (perhaps) do a one-on-one (one GM, one player) with someone outside of my regular group, a Warhammer enthusiast (the minis game). Unfortunately, so far I have never GMed nor played this game so I cannot really judge if the game lends iself to this type of play. So, has any of you done an 1-on-1with WFRP 3rd? Did it work? To me, this doesn’t seem to be the easiest game to use for a 1-on-1, what with the party sheet and all. How did you handle the party sheet? Fortune points? Anything else I have to consider? Any good 1-on-1 adventure you can recommend?

What about those of you that know the game well but haven't done a 1-on-1? Do you think this could work?

Thanks.

Although ive not played the game much how about adding an npc run by yourself to provide some direction and support to the pc.

I supose it depends on the adventure and gaming style.

MARVIN THE ARVN said:

Yeah, nice idea. I could do that. Or I could give the player a second PC.

I plan to use "A Day Late, A Shilling Short" and remove some of the beastmen.

I was going to recommend a second PC but if this is your players first game it might overload them, then again some people might thrive under those conditions

A day late, A shilling short is a fairly good adventureto run through and it depends on what characters you have as to how many beastmen you need to drop.

I've done several 1 on 1 games to date. The system works just fine but i do encourage the use of a NPC to accompany the PC which you activly play, not just someone to help fiddle aroudn in combat.

I'd encourage playing either Day late, Shilling Short, or perhaps one of the one-pager adventures from The Daily Empire, I particularly liked Sweet Marrow by Gallows. Most of the written adventures from FFG really do like having multiple players both from a comabt and roleplaying perspective.

Gitzman

Gitzman said:

So it's better if I play the second character instead of letting the player have a 2nd PC? OK.

I will have a look at these one-pagers. Didn't know about them. Thanks for the help.

I've run several 1-on-1 sessions with WFRP3 and it works just fine. I just dropped the Party Sheet altogether (as it doesn't make much sense with only a single player) and awarded Fortune Points directly to the player rather than to a pool (since, effectively, the "party size" is 1 anyway).

The player controlled only a single character but I did have an assortment of NPCs that were occasionally helpful when they were around. The PC even sort of bonded with one such NPC and his actions resulted in the NPC being promoted to higher station...good fortune that the NPC would be happy to repay later on down the road.

Combat has to be carefully considered but then, that's generally true with Warhammer anyway. It is not a game where you want to depend upon your sword to solve your problems. The adventure that I ran was one of my own design and it really only featured a single combat but the PC was not a "warrior" career and not overly "equipped" for combat anyway.

ive always thought a watchman who had designs on investigator would be a cool one on one play experience. i'm a big fan of the new sherlock holmes movie and watson/holmes type characters in altdorf could be pretty fun too.

Bloody Sun Boy said:

So, the Party Sheet is out.

After the introductory adventure I plan to focus on urban adventures. I think it's the best setting for 1-on-1s. Many years ago I used Sanctuary (the city from Thieves' World) for a series of AD&D 1-on-1s and it was a lot of fun. Very intense.

Remorhaz said:

Cool idea. I could play the (goofy) sidekick.

watson was something of a badass. He was an army surgeon in afghanistan and a expert marksman with his pistol. Holmes was an expert fencer, stick fighter and boxer and even mentions in passing he had picked up some sort of training in japanese martial arts.

in warhammer terms you could have a watchman and barber surgeon who work together with aspirations of becoming an investigator and physician respectively. They could be independent contractors that the watch or wealthy nobles hire out on occasion to look into cases they don't have the resources to pursue. Both would be skilled enough at combat so it would not be a death sentence even if the odds were slightly against them but investigation and social interaction would dominate most of the sessions. you have them start in a smaller town and as they solved more and more cases eventually be called in to Altdorf to tackle the most baffling cases. With two people the party card could be used and the nemesis cards would definitely have a place as the PCs investigations would make them powerful enemies.

for the cases i would set up a tracker. The pcs could investigate the crime scene and look for clues and interrogate suspects and witnesses. Success or failure would advance the case solved tracker and botching up would set them back and if they failed enough times the criminal would get away, succeed in his nefarious deed, or the trail would go cold. Cases could range from kidnapping, murder, theft all the way to the uncovering of a chaos cult amongst the altdorf noblity.

The only bummer would be as the GM and you would already know how each case would turn out and you would be have be mindful of your own knowledge influencing how you play the sidekick.

regardless of what you decide to do ie running something like this or a more traditional warhammer scenario a session report would be much appreciated:)

Remorhaz said:

All very, very good ideas, I would LOVE to try this, BUT the dude I will GM for has 3 kids, a wife, a job and recently bought an old house he has to renovate. I’m almost sure that we will manage to do an introductory game but will it become something regular? Not sure at all.

As to the session report, English not being my first language, it would be a bit of a struggle for me to write an “in depth” report. But a short account would be doable.

if play time is the issue i;d ask what the player what he'd like to do. there is no sense in running something the player does not have time to complete or has no interest in running. my main game is pathfinder and ive had to scale back my campaign based on play time of the players. the reality is adult players with real life responsibilities don't usually have the time for multi year campaigns and 4-5 hour play sessions. it sucks but this is the reality.

We managed to play « A Day Late, a Shilling Short » on Saturday. My buddy played Vaerun Waveracer, I played Brigitta Tageslicht. The result was a bit of a mixed bag.
(Possible spoilers ahead!)

First, the negatives:
1. I should have been better prepared (entirely my fault). I wanted to reread the rules one more time before the game but RL didn’t want to let me. I warned my player that I would have to look up various rules during the game. He didn’t mind, in fact he liked the idea of us learning the rules together. So it wasn’t as bad as I expected, although it WAS a bumpy ride, BUT I still made one major mistake: During the first fight and half into the second fight I completely forgot the “Dodge” and “Parry” actions. Wow …
2. We both didn’t like the adventure very much. There were too many fights and the social encounter at the end felt a bit contrived. (Why would anyone who has just been rescued from certain death, behave that way? I couldn’t explain that to my player (nor to myself).) In fact, the best part was the roleplaying we did back in Ubersreik before the actual adventure started.

Now, the good stuff:
Despite the negatives, we had a lot of fun and will probably (almost certainly) play again .The dice system rocked. But next time I will drop most of the counters (stress, fatigue, wounds, aggression, cunning, etc.) and just write things down. It’s much easier for the GM IMO.
I think I will pick up on Remorhaz’ idea of having my player play an investigator. I also have this crazy idea of using my expensive but still unused Ptolus book on this occasion.

But I also have a still unresolved rules question on “Fear and Terror”. The rules stipulate: “When a character first confronts a creature …”. Does this mean “when he first confronts that particular creature…” or “when he first confronts this creature type”? Let’s say a PC meets Rat Ogre “Ronald”. The PC needs to do a Discipline check. Now, does this mean that after that first encounter he no longer needs to roll for Terror when he meets Ronald? Or does he no longer need to roll for Terror when he meets any Rat Ogre (i.e. is he now immune to any Rat Ogre’s Fear for the rest of his adventuring career)?

Ysbryd said:

IMO, I would only require one roll for Ronald during the encounter, but any future appearances with Rat Ogres would require additional rolls. Think of it from the standpoint of the Alien movie franchise. No matter how many times you came around a corner, you'd still S#@$ your pants if an Alien was standing there. my 2 cents.

Ysbryd said:

You're right it's entirely contrived. This adventure is designed to highlight different aspects of basic WHFRP (3rd ed) play.

[spoilerS AHEAD]

Some ideas on why the merchant may behave the way he might:

1. The package - it's an artifact of profane power (perhaps a brother to the artifact in Eye for an Eye), and the merchant cannot or will not let it go for any reason - despite his gratitude.

2. Although he was rescued, he is still in shock - and people that are in shock act irrationally. His behavior defaulted to the familiar - aloof tradesman. Perhaps he has a change of heart later after he's had a chance to recover?

3. He's just a greedy bastard.

4. The beastmen were the merchant's servants (he has some kind of control over them, perhaps by the item he is holding). He used the beastmen to rid him of the carriage driver (and other passangers?) - thereby allowing him to fake his own death and subsequent disappearance. He was never in any real danger until the PCs arrived, and now, if he can just keep them there till the next wave of his servants arrives...

[END SPOILERS]

Regarding the components - one of the benefits of using the cards and counters is the visual queues it gives to both GMs and players - enhancing roleplaying ideally. As a GM, you can scan the character sheets and notice, "Johan the barber surgeon is nearly out of his mind from seeing the ghosts rise from the funeral pyres (he has 4 stress tokens). He still hasn't recovered fully from fighting off the skeletal guardians (he has 7 wound cards splayed in front of him), and he suffered a particularly nasty knock on the head (he has a critical wound). A player can remember to "play up" the knock on the head more often with a visual queue in front of him (more likely) - rather than it being buried in notes on his character sheet.

I always thought that the demo would have combined well with the scenario "Karls & Scents."

The 'merchant' in Karls & scents has a package that needs to go somewhere and beastmen are definitely involved Senor Amufito Domingo is also a much more likable character than the one in DLSS, making the characters more likely to help him.

jh

DarkWarder said:

Yes, it’s probably more logical. Otherwise you would need to keep track of every single creature the PCs have already encountered during their many adventures.
On the other hand you could perhaps house rule that you subtract the PC’s (level – 1) from the creatures’ Fear and Terror rating to reflect his emotional blunting from having witnessed “the horrors of the world”. So, a level 2 PC would deduct 1 from the creatures’ ratings. But after only 1 game I will not house rule anything. Much too early.

gsoul said:

I meant for me as a GM it was too much hassle to use counters for the NPCs. I stopped drawing wound cards (not critical wounds) for the beastmen for example. Instead, I just took notes. Later I also got rid of Aggression/Cunning/Expertise counters. I like the cards, no problem there.
And it’s of course OK for the players to use all the counters they want.

In that case - I completely agree with you.

When tracking wounds, I usually just take a wound card and put tokens on it to remind me of how many wounds a monster has.

Conditions and other effects, I'll use cards for - but criticals I usually let the player apply extra (un-soakable) wounds equal to the severity level of the critical, rather than apply the effect (their choice).

Agreession/Cunning/Expertise - I'm never precise about this. I keep a running tally in my head, and fudge it a little here and there.

Ysbryd said:

Ysbryd said:

Or you could let the players raise their characters Will Power and or train and or specialise discipline.

Now, if the characters do end up fighting Rat Ogres or some such on a regular basis then yea maybe you need a house rule but otherwise I doubt it is needed. Pesonally I would probably just make a talent card in Strange Eons that can be slotted to the party sheet, perhaps: "After numerous, bloody encounters with "Rat Ogres" you have learned to keep your wits about you, despite their horrendous nature" - The "Rat Ogres" fear rating does not necessitate a test for the group while this card is slotted.

bladerunner_35 said:

Personally, I wouldn't get hung up on "levels" (ranks in WFRP3). They are not like some other role-playing games, where just because you're rank 3 you are better at X than someone at rank 1. What is great about WFRP (all 3 editions) is that *you* decide what areas of your character improve as you gain experience (advances) - of course, this is not just limited to WFRP, but it's a cool part of it. As a GM I try to get my players to use their advances based on what happened in the adventures (true "experience") or on stuff they take time out to train. So, if your players are encountering Rat Ogres all over the place, then they're probably getting used to terrifying surprises and should increase Will Power, train discipline, etc. as bladerunner_35 said - the idea about giving a talent card is quite good too...