UniversalHead said:

Generally I just have one unique special action per encounter. Basic actions need no tracking. I have the players vault and creatures vault, so I have extra cards. But my NPCs share actions in combat if I only have one of a certain card.

UniversalHead said:

I think what you've done with fatigue/stress is great - not just in looks, but as the mechanics help the feel of the game, it's good to emphasise them too.

But regarding your point about not using all the bits and bobs - that's mainly the players' responsibility. If they want to throw in talents, skills, specialisations, etc., etc. into a roll - great. But for NPCs (which is really what we're talking about here - it's really not necessary (in my opinion).

All I really need to know in any given situation is: roughly how much of a challenge/threat should this action/event/attack present to a player? I don't need to look anything up, or refer to any cards; I just need to think 'this beastman is exceptionally tough and the terrible rain and darkness is going to give him an advantage'. Great: I'll just roll a bunch of dice that will give me a better than odds chance of suceeding in my attack. You can (but don't need to) do this in one single thought. i.e. rather than just declaring that the big, scary beastman is going to pound on you, you can say, as you assemble the dice pool that 'he's huge, looks like he's been through a number of wars, and can clearly see very well in the dark', as you add good/bad dice to the pool. But it really doesn't matter for NPC rolls whether or not you're rolling dice exactly according to a card.

The WFRP rules are very player-centric. i.e. the rules are designed to let the players experience the world, its inhabitants, and influence it/them. They are not really designed for everyone to use them, and if you try to use them (they're not the most complex RPG rules ever, but nor are they the simplest), it will take too long to do anything important (develop the plot and character).

HedgeWizard said:

I'm reading this at the moment and there's some very interesting tips, though his whole approach seems somewhat antithetical to the WFRP3 system. I was especially amused by how he completely pans the 3 act structure that WFRP3 loves so much!

Yeah - I don't follow either his guides or the 3-Act structure to the letter, but I like some of the minimalist ideas he espouses. Things I pulled from his book that I particularly use:

• Getting the players to state intentions & goals - then when thinking/designing sessions, start from the things the PCs/Players want to accomplish and design around that.
• Focus more on creating a loose structure with a variety of options to achieve success without going in-depth in planning each segment
• creation of quick NPC name/traits to have on hand
• creation of a couple of back-up, oh-**** encounters/situations for when the PCs go off the rails beyond what you can accommodate.
• And in general, he raises some things to think through when creating a sandbox/adventure/campaign.

In many ways it's got me thinking a lot about how badly the published WFRP3 adventures are written and laid out. They are far too structured and linear, and the GM information is scattered all over the place. It's a shame FFG aren't a bit more innovative with their adventures, IMHO.

I generally use published adventures, twisted to a certain degree, but nonetheless largely the same. I read the adventure section they are arriving at beforehand and from there I just make sure I have a monster and actions ready if necessary. If I finished the last session mid-combat, (for which I must emphatically state:GOD BLESS THE RALLY PHASE) I will update the website for our game sessions and make sure I have an accurate account of all actions, fatigue and wounds yadayadayada to make sure we start from where we left off. So, in short, preperation rarely takes more than an hour or two.

Hedgewizard that wound tracker is precisely the thing I have been looking for, consider it yoinked.

I must admit that I've played both home made and commercial scenarios, and every single time my players have gone off at a tangent. No matter how much (or little) prep I do, they always end up in the wrong place, or focus on the wrong person/place/object. In fact some of our best sessions have been when the whole thing has been made up on the run! Nowadays I make post-it notes on major npc's, enemies and places, and (I can't stress this too much) don't explain things too much . Honestly, if I forget something and there's a glaring fault in motive or story, my players will think it's super important and make up some complete nonsense to explain it! I also expect them to track recharge, skills etc - if they forget it's their problem. I'm lucky in that my players seem to enjoy the role play more than anything else, (especially the bickering!) and seem to forget many of the rules between sessions. I'm quite happy to give out extra dice, 'instant' recharges and million-to-one chances (that succeed scarily often) for good ideas, dramatic presentation and plain silliness. I also allow quite a lot of negotiation by players, and find it's often the other players who are harder on each other than me.

That said, I think if any of my players were a little more competitive, winging it would be waaaaay harder.

That's a pretty solid group you've got there dude...

Some of my best games have been written on a single notebook page.
The main gist of the plot is in my head, and for the rest I just wing it depending on what the players do.

All I need is a 5 mins for a list of NPC and location names and simple stats based on the system e.g. '60% combat 20HP 4 armour' and I'm ready to start.

If you are stuck and short a sceanrio simply think up a theme and run with it.
For example I did a whole nights play based on the simple desire to have a fight in a burning windmill like the one in the Warhammer MMO.
Or one with a cantakerous dwarf with a bust leg that needs escorting through the hills to the Dwarven fort. Lob in a bunch of goblins, ruined bridge, much harrased elven member of the party carrying said dwarf, and you can have a good nights fun with minutes of prep

You know, I read that whole 230 page PDF on Gamemastering and last night's session was one of the least successful we've had in a while! Of course, it was a city-based adventure with no combat, and I had to wing quite a lot - but I think I really have to accept that my players just love the biffo much more than the roleplaying. I'd made up a big map of Ubersreik with stand-ups for the locations they were visiting, but have yet to decide whether it's a help or a hindrance. I think the players do get the feeling that they are getting to know the city better as more locations get marked on the map hoever.

I'm still trying to find the perfect balance point for prep. I know I do too much, and at a certain point it's just too much to refer to during a session. I'll experiment with greatly abbreviated notes next time.

I've been doing this for years with plenty of success, but the eternal search for game improving goes on!

As is apparent and we greatly look forward to pilfering your ideas!

I don't benefit from over preparation much myself. Not to say I haven't tried it on more than one occasion, but it just bottoms out for me, invariably someone pulls something out of their ass or misses a plot hook and I'm left scrabbling for where I left stuff. So my preparation involves actually scraping the session down to a bare minimum of stuff I actually need to do. In essence, that means reading over the scenario and knowing precisely what two or three things need to happen in order to move the story along. Everything else is just filling the gaps with stoopid.

UniversalHead said:

Where is this PDF to be found?

Here . Be sure to sling him some cash, it's a lot of work and nice of him to make it available online.

Cool, thanks. I'll check it out.

I'm prepping for the second session of my second campaign, and having been actively working to find ways to ease prep time.

For the most part, I run a largely improvisational style game, with as much background, locations and opponents as I can think of ahead of time. Where ever the players want to go, I'll follow their lead. Where this becomes difficult is trying to wing a new creature/npc opponent. You have to get the opponent's information from the card and then translate it based on what actions you want them to take. For me, its a lot to juggle story along with all those numbers.

So, I've started to create reference sheets for creatures or npcs that my players are likely to face. I go ahead and determine all the relevant numbers, from the basic dice pool for various actions to damage based on results. It's a one page sheet that also includes as much detail about special abilities and the opponent's defense.

Creating the sheets is a bit of a pain because I'm using the Warhammer icons font and doing it all in photoshop, but I'm hoping the result will make my part of a combat encounter easier. I've got about twenty of these done now, and eventually hope to have pretty much all the creatures translated into this format and in my campaign notebook.

You could just stick your cards on the copier and voila! One button - one sheet!

I myself just stick with the Creature guide (which is TERRIBLY organized), but I don't have time anymore to sort a bunch of cards ahead of time.

jh

You're making it difficult for yourself doing such text heavy work in Photoshop ... inDesign would be much easier. Nice summary!

The Creature Guide should be completely redone, IMHO.

UniversalHead said:

I agree completely and that is essentially what I'm doing for myself. While I love the flexibility of the cards, I want to have the flexibility of running off-the-cuff encounter without the delay of trying to pull together disparate sources of information about the creatures, special abilities and actions involved. I want to have a one page summary that provides all that information at my finger tips. What I'll end up with is a binder style monster manual ala 2nd edition AD&D.

As for just photocopying the cards I need... I'm old enough that I need reading glasses for that small print, so for me, the solution is slightly larger type and good contrast!

I'm using Photoshop because it's the tool I know best.

UniversalHead said:

Great resource! Just ran through it completely. While some of the things in there are not 100% WFRP compatible, it's fairly system-neutral

For every session I organize my NPCs in this binder. Then it's very simple to pull our the page(s) I need for combat and use tracking tokens (that I like, because it's simple).

I use it together with my wound tracking sheet: Wound Tracker (I didn't make the tracker, I just pasted several on a page. Can't remember who did it).

I find combat very easy to manage with these two tools.

Gallows said:

That would be mine! Glad to see someone else is finding them useful.

HedgeWizard said:

Ahh yes... finally. I hate posting stuff I haven't made and not even know whom to give credit. I really like it. It's just perfect for tracking. I just prepare before the session and I have wound trackers for all NPCs. Great stuff Hedgewizard. Edited the sheet to show credit

I am pretty accurate in tracking everything from recharge to A/C/E, wounds and crits for all NPCs (no crits for henchmen of course, but the other NPCs just get their crits under their wound tracker. I don't find it hard to track it all. For fatigue and stress I remove A/C/E instead of giving them wounds, but if they have none left they do get wounds.

UniversalHead said:

UH, I know exactly what you mean! I have a huge problem with OVER prepping for my sessions. Luckily there's usually a good two-three week gap between our games, so it gives me plenty of time to over-obsess over encounter planning. Currently I brew up encounter sheets with various trackers and NPC tactics/stats front and center. I tend to create decks of action cards for my baddies/NPCs...I find that only displaying the currently used/recharging Action card frees up a ton of table realestate.

UH, I'm really curious about this Ubersreik map you've created. I attempted to do the same on a big sheet of poster paper, but haven't quite figured out HOW I want to implement it. Any chance we might see a pic of your map?

I'll take a photo of it next session, but basically I scanned the map, blew it up in Photoshop and put it on a background, and printed it in tiled A4 sections. Then I made lots of 'standee' graphics for the locations using pictures of buildings from all over the place (that took quite a while), printed them and stuck them on cardboard. Yes, it was a bit effort, but when I saw the players automatically clustering their miniatures around the location they were at, it was worth it! Also gives them a sense of discovery as they find new locations.