Following our first session, my newborn daughter was sent home from the NICU and we spent several sleepless nights learning how to not sleep. Within a few weeks, when things settled back to normal, I was surprised to hear it was our newbie roadwarden who was itching the most to play again, so I set up a session for the weekend.

Unfortunately, our Priest of Sigmar couldn't make it, and since we ended right before the second act of "Day Late and a Shilling Short," I couldn't launch right into "Eye for an Eye", without leaving him behind. I came into GM'ing with low confidence on running my own adventures, and was planning on running some of the great WFRP adventures as they provided just enough framework.

But just one session in, I had to start remixing. With the remaining PC's at hand, I abandoned the encounter with the merchant (we'll do social encounters later), and had the PC's find that the coach had been hastily converted to prisoner transport, and Rutger the Roadwarden told them that at the outset of the ambush, two humans, a tall skinny man in fine clothing, and a hulking thug in filthy robes had been among the beastmen, and had grabbed the prisoner as well as several pieces of mail. They'd fled south just moments before the fight. Our PC Roadwarden was still technically on duty, so he led the charge to rescue the prisoner.

So the PC's charged into the dark woods, where they proceeded to fail every possible stealth check imaginable. Even the Wood Elf Waywatcher with all her forest walking, cracked a few twigs. At the top of a rise, I placed a ruined house, composed of waist high walls. I fully expected the PC's to reach the ruins unaware, where they would catch a cultist, his cult mutant counterpart, and three nervous, but non-henchmen ungors in the act of hanging the prisoner. I wanted something that I could connect to Grunewald Lodge, while also implying a wider network of cults and machinations.

I fully expected the prisoner to die (I gave him a tracker of three turns before he lost consciousness, and another one before he died) and for the PC's to kill the cultist, and only gain a small amount of information (the cultist had also stolen all the mail destined for Grunewald lodge AND our Gold Order Wizard's personal correspondence), that would eventually lead the PC's to seek out Rickard Aschaffenberg and offer assistance. My idea was that this minor league cultist was tasked by someone to disrupt information flowing to the non-cultists of Grunewald Lodge, and to kill a minor criminal who knew something he wasn't supposed to know about the Eldritch Order of the Unblinking Eye. I was non specific on the details in my head, as I whipped up the encounter the night before the game.

This was a great lesson in GM'ing. Plan for the unexpected.

Knowing they had lost the element of surprise the PC's charged the ruins, and despite not having the priest among them, having a few wounds from before, not having the high ground, fighting in the rain, and attacking a foe in cover, they managed to kill the ungors with frightening speed. The Gold Order wizard charged ahead, surrounded by orbs of gold as protection (I forget the name of this spell, but it made for a great image), and the roadwarden and the bounty hunter moved in to support in a great little fracas at the base of the ruins.

The Roadwarden landed an amazing critical on one ungor, as well as a chaos star, so I decided his sword got stuck in the beastman's skull, and he had to use his next maneuver to withdraw it. Our bounty hunter (played by my wife, who'd never played an RPG before) used "guarded position" with great success to protect the wizard. I hadn't fully understood that card, I realized, and she was thinking tactically enough to bust up my ungor's next attacks. The wizard left the engagement to see what the cultist was doing behind the wall, and our lawmen put the ungors down after two more turns.

The waywatcher and the wizard made it to the top of the hill, where they saw the cult mutant tying off the rope that held the prisoner aloft, and the cultist pegged them both with a crossbow. The mutant (using a random mutation card and a little creative license) had a beak for mouth, and a half formed mouth in place of one eye. The Waywatcher used one of her specialized ranged attacks and got the result that ignores soak, dealing a mind boggling amount of damage. I described the arrow entering the vestigial mouth, which chewed feebly at the shaft. The wizard used "fault of form" to badly degrade the cultist's crossbow, and exhausted his talent "I seem to recall" to boost up the check, telling me that he was recalling what the most likely to fail part of a crossbow was. The crossbow degraded, I added a challenge dice to the cultists next attack, and viola, two chaos stars, so the crossbow burst apart, wounding the cultist sending him into retreat.

Then, the waywatcher, staring down an angry mutant, and a rapidly hanging man, said to me what I should have expected from the beginning, but somehow did not even think of:

"I want to shoot the rope."

Always say yes, right? I declared it to be a daunting shot, adding four challenge dice, and some mitigating misfortune dice. She added all her possible benefits, used her fortune points, and rolled. In the end, she had one success and a chaos star, so I described the arrow parting the rope directly around his neck, severely wounding him in the process.

The wizard used magic dart just as his shield of golden orbs dissipated, so I had the last orb elongate and zip away, killing the poor mutant.

They intimidated the cultist into surrender, and set about patching up the prisoner's neck. I repaid their kindness by having the prisoner stab the wizard in the ribs before running away. But the Bounty Hunter cooly shot him in the knee, ending his escape. They retrieved two prisoners where I expected none, as well as the mail, and returned to the coach to meet back up with the priest and head back to Ubersreik to heal up and drink heavily.

I made several props just for this adventure, mail for the bounty hunter and the wizard. This was one of the most fun parts of the whole thing for me. I got sealing wax, aged and weathered the paper, and addressed them.

The Bounty Hunter's letter, on cheaper darker paper, told her that she should be on the look out for a chaos tainted painting, for that group has knowledge of her missing sister...

The Wizards letter, entreats him to make amends to his college by hiring some muscle and seeking to help Rickard Aschaffenberg (In character creation, I let him go up one wealth level by abusing Fool's Gold, on the caveat that I would make his life difficult because of it).

Of special note, I carved the symbol of the gold order into a potato, which made an excellent seal.

The physical props seemed to be a hit, and I hope it encourages the other players to think up a backstory so I can make the continuing adventures more personally connected for them.

The narrative detail provided by the dice continues to make it easy to spin great stories out of what might have been: You hit the bad guy. And even our most inexperienced players could build dice pools with ease, and were using action cards that I had never read. The card mechanic that seemed so gimmicky to me at first, now seems obviously superior to having five open player's guides.

What proved to be the greatest joy was that our daughter was able to nap peacefully during some of the game, and then was passed from player to player to be held and played with during the combat. I held her on my chest for several turns of combat, and she cooed and gurgled with pleasure as we hooted, hollered, and rolled dice. It was wonderful to have two parts of my life merge so well.

Some mistakes I made:

- I let them use "block", even though none of them had a shield (never again, kids)
- I missed out on using misfortune and fortune dice to give them a disadvantage while charging the small hill (d'oh)
- I told them later that the cultist swallowed a poison pill, and they could not interrogate him. Then I realized how cheap this was, as they searched him, and one of them has "minute details" as a specialization of observation. So I reversed time, and told them I needed to figure out what he knows, but I'm going to let them interrogate both the cultist and the prisoner.

Some questions:

- My PC's aren't generating much stress or fatigue. I think one of them did two maneuvers in order to reload and run, and another gained a stress as the result of a critical wound. Does this seem right? Are there other common ways that PC's should be getting stress or fatigue?
- We are all new to the warhammer world, so let me know if I've made any really egregious fiction tweaks. I know it's a stretch for cultists and beastmen to be working together, however briefly, but given they had just fought beastmen, and will again in Eye for an Eye, I really wanted to use another enemy type for this fight.

All in all, it was a blast, and flying by the seat of my pants with a home made encounter was loads of fun. Next time, we're off to Grunewald Lodge, and I'm realizing I enjoy it quite a bit when they derail my expectations, so I'm redoubling my efforts to stay fast and loose, and railroad as little as possible.

First things first, wow, just wow, those letters look amaaaaaazing and you can be hella sure I'm not showing my group any of this because the whingy pillocks will start demanding same.

Back to your session and, seriously, well done, your first, flying by the seat of your trousers session can be a big challange but you seem to have pulled it off with riotous success, sounds like it was a big hit and moreso, well done for not letting it slide down the railroad, you could have done alot to make sure the prisoner died, the cultist got away etc. Instead, you rewarded good play and everyone had fun and that, my freind, is what we do this crazy stuff for.

As for your issues. Nothing, not a problem, all of those are something we all personally do, so I wouldn't worry so much about it.

Now, stress and fatigue. Well, they are great mechanics, marvellous, no less, especially for making PC's realise just how vulnerable they really are. The first question to ask yourself if your PC's aren't suffering(in your opinion) enough stress is "what stance are they using?" if the answer is conservative, then they should be suffering two or three of each, depending on circumstances. If the answer is reckless, they should be crying their own blood. Simple really.

To add more, stress to the situation, consider any of the following:

1. Make sure your applying the old reliable "2 banes, right in the b****" rule. just to be dropping them in on the sly.

2. Apply one or two stress for each chaos star, if you can't think of anything imaginative to do with them. (Though you hardly seemed troubled by lack of inginuity.)

3. Don't just apply stress in combat, there are plenty of times to dump it on players in story mode, so long as you make it more difficult than allowing them to sit down for a sec to shift.

4. Hit them with it when you want to hurry them up. It's always worth a laugh.

Otherwise, you seem to be doing amaaaaaazingly well, especially for a first session, I wish mine ran like that! Also, congratulations on your new potential gamer!

Crazy Aido said:

Actually, these props were incredibly easy to make, and a load of fun, and I'm not terribly crafty. I can't recommend doing it enough, the look on the players faces when I handed them their mail and a knife to open it was awesome. But it only took about 20-30 minutes to make.

1. Write the letter. I used a couple of "handwriting" fonts found free on the internet, and typed up a pair of one sheets. Really, this was the longest part. I'd suggest using a printed font, as actual ink tends to run in the soaking step later.
2. Tear the edges off. I used a straight ruler to make the tear even on the Wizard's letter, and free hand on the Bounty Hunter's letter
3. Crumple the paper for a rougher look. I did not crumple to Wizard's letter, but I balled up the Bounty Hunter's letter, and then uncoiled it about a dozen times. When you soak the crumpled paper, it will darken along the deepest folds, creating a veined look. You can flatten it out at the end, but the soak will take care of most of it.
4. Soak in double strength black tea. I did it in a baking dish, and tea worked, but I have heard coffee does as well. For the pale, expensive parchment of the Wizard's letter, I let it soak for about 10 minutes. For the rough cheap paper of the Bounty Hunter's letter, I let it soak for a few more hours. Then dry it out.
5. Wax seals totally optional, but most stationary shops still sell sealing wax. You can use a coin, your thumb or a potato stamp as the seal. This is way easier than it sounds, and it really sealed the deal, so to speak.

Check out this prop I have ready to go for Eye for an Eye:

Crazy Aido said:

I definitely need to start doing freestyle stress and fatigue. I missed the 2 Banes rule, but I will be darn certain to tag them on it in the future. For Chaos Stars, I have way too much fun coming up with moment specific critical failures, so we'll see how the economy of fatigue works in the future.

My players were all in conservative stance, as our reckless Sigmarite was absent, and they were still wounded from the first encounter, so no fatigue there.

I was up front about this being the overture of a much more vicious game, so I'm letting them heal their criticals, but when we start on Eye for an Eye, I'll be tracking encumbrance, ammunition, and making them pay by the day for lodging and food. But if that's too much micro management, I will probably back off. I'll definitely be fatiguing and stressing them more. After all, our Sigmarite want's to be Witch Hunter, and we gotta get him an insanity some how.

brilliant work

none of my players characters are literate though...

New Zombie said:

Oh, literacy, another rule I missed entirely until a Reckless Dice podcast. Fortunately, our Bounty Hunter is a high elf, with education already on the books. For our Gold Wizard, I'm going to give him the ability to read for now, but I'll make him take education at some point...

The others, they'll just have to deal with not being able to read from here on out.

Did you use the baddies A/C/E?

Also, their Actions?

Your players are awfully lucky to have such a creative, imaginative, and spontaneous GM! Very impressive work.

Eldenward said:

I did! Actually, the A/C/E system bears mentioning: I loved being able to decide on the fly that an NPC was "trained" in something just by using the Expertise dice, or being able to effectively raise his attack or defense with Agression die. The fact that the system is designed to be flexible in all aspects really shines through with a by-the-seat-of-the-pants encounter.

And I used the creature action charts on Gitzmann's site to give everyone a nice little spread of appropriate attacks. In the future, I might be more flexible with the loadout, but it was nice to have a little thematic pre-built pack.

Not that any of them got to use more than one before being decimated by my party of high-damage dealers... But that's another balance question

entropyblues said:

Both high elves and gold wizards have education acquired, not trained. So assume they can both read, for now. They need to spend advances to earn the expertise dice.

First - kudos on everything, props, being a "say Yes" GM and more - it all sounds great.

In terms of stress & fatigue, I use suggestions from the hardbacks for "more options from comets, chaos stars" etc. and have a generic - chaos star can mean 2 stress or fatigue as appropriate effect option all the time.

You can throw more Fear and Terror effects at them, remember to use those on the monsters etc.

I think you say to spotted some missed opportunities - putting PC's in situations where they have to "run to make it in time" ensures a couple of fatigue points.

Second - beastmen and cultists / mutants - I'm not 100% here but I think generally beastmen are not prone to working with humans at all, they have mutants among their numbers at times is the closest it comes. If you put in some suitably "powerful chaos thing" to be welding disparate forces together that would probably be fine. If anything let knowledge checks or NPC advice tell the heroes that, "hmm, this is strange, those beastmen cooperating with humans, even if cultists, a sign of the end times if ever tehre was one.".

valvorik said:

Putting a timer restriction on the PC's is a great mechanic, I'll have to use more timers that can't be halted by one epic arrow shot. It definitely changes the combat from: Here's some monsters. Keep hitting them until they stop hitting you.

The poor mutant got his Fear effect, but my players shrugged it all off to the last.

Ficitonally, I think I will tie the beastman/cultist collusion (which was really a side effect of needing another type of villain than beastmen on the fly) to the Gathering Storm, since I already declared the cultist to be from Stromdorf. Maybe they were part of Izka Madtooth's herd, and they are assisting the Stromdorf cult in some way? There is a wood elf in my party, it seems correct that she would be aware of the strangeness of the situation....

I think I have a little more time to flesh out that particular arrangement, but my PCs have been very thorough in their (over email) interrogation of the poor cultist. They also set him free (rather, made him think he had escaped) with a cantrip'ed brass coin in his pocket made to resonante in the gold wind for the next day, so they can track him back to his fellows. That was too clever an idea for me to pass up on.

So, I can either have him head back to his fellows in Stromdorf (and start The Gathering Storm), or have him head north to Grunewald Lodge, and have his story weave into Eye for an Eye. But either way, they've pissed him off enough to make a potential nemesis, and next session should be a blast.

Crazy Aido said:

I see where High Elves get education acquired as a racial bonus, but where does it say Apprentice Wizards get education? I know they get Channeling and Spellcraft acquired at creation. Thematically it makes total sense, and I may just give it to him, but did I miss an explicit rule?

It's in the wizard-y book that came with the box...

Yup, grammatical genius me.

Crazy Aido said:

I took a look at a friend's PDF of the Tome of Wizard-y (I have the guides), and it says:

All apprentice wizards begin the game with the Channelling and Spellcraft advanced skills already acquired.

An apprentice wizard would also be wise to invest some creation points into skills to allow him to train other skills available to him: Discipline, Education, Intuition, and Observation.

The guides also say something similar. I'm going to let my wizard acquire it after the fact, but it looks like they only get the magic based skills at creation.