Hi.

I'm trying to run a WFRP3e adventure where the players play a party of norscans.

Short summary of the story so far:

The characters live in the Graeling village of Örnheim. One day the village is shaken by an earthquake.

The village Vitki tries to discern the meaning of this by sacrificing a thrall. Tchar answers his call and informs him that the ancient dragon living in the mountains above the village is waking up. Tchar will aid the village if they bring a sacrifice to his shrine.

A party of 6 villagers (2 players and 4 NPCs) is assembled. As a sacrifice, they take a casket of treasures with them, as well as 6 thralls (3 bjornling warriors and 3 imperial thralls).

They head out through the forest, and find themselves stalked by a pack of wolves.

They come to a river they need to cross to continue. They start making an improvised bridge from a tree they cut down.

While they're working on the bridge they're attacked by the wolves, which they manage to kill/drive off.

They finish cutting the tree down and manages to tip it over the river. It doesn't look particularly safe, so to test it out, they send an imprial thrall over first.

He falls off the tree and drowns.

So they cut down another tree ot make a better bridge. The second tree falls on another imperial thrall who breaks his leg.

The leader of the party slits his throat and offers the kill to Tchar.

They finish the bridge and attemtp to cross. One of the Bjornling thralls fall in, but manages to hang on until his fellow bjornlings haul him up.

The final imperial thrall slips and falls in the river as well, and joins his countrymen in death.

The norscans make camp for the night. They are now 2 PCs, 4 NPC graeling warriors and 3 NPC bjornling thralls and they've lost some equipment in the river with the two inperial thralls (what equipment has been lost is still to be decided).

So, the next session will start as the characters wake up the next morning. My plan onward is that they'll spend 3-4 more days traveling thorugh the forest until they reach the mining village of Jerngard, where they can stock up on supplies, thralls and possibly new companions, before continuing onwards into the middle of the forest.

What I'm looking for, are suggestions for encounters they can have along the way. As I mentioned at the start, I've included 4 nondescript "warriors" which can be used as new player characters, if their current characters should die. So having a sort of lethal encounter is no problem.

So far, what I've come up with is this:

The cold: The adventure is set at the onset of winter. So as the characters travel, it gets colder and colder, giving them an extra incentive to press on. I'll represent this by introducing harder and harder Resilience tests which cause fatigue and even wounds. I'll let the characters themselves try to come up with solutions to protect themselves from the cold.

Ymir: Ymir are the beastman version of the yeti. I'm thinking of having one stalk them as they move through the misty woods. Perhaps even grabbing one of the NPCs during the night and running off with him.

Norse Dwarves: The Norse Dwarves are not on good terms with the Graelings, but I'm thinking it might be interesting for them to run into a small group of dwarven explorers. Both groups will have enough troubles as it is and be less inclined to start a fight. They might even be able to do a bit of trading and exchange of information. However, the bjornling tribe is on better terms with the dwarven clans and might try to escape by joining forces with the dwarves.

I ran a CONAN campaign in Asgard/Vanaheim/Cimmeria for about a year and a half and we used the heck out of the D&D 3.5 supplement, FROSTBURN. It's chock full of cool ideas. Also, take a look a Asgard/Vanaheim information on the internet. I think you'll find plenty of useful ideas.

jh

You are probaby familiar with all the Norsca info I have on my site? Kalevalahammer - Norsca

I'm building WFRP3 based rules, but they are still on the works... But in the documents are some ideas about cold environment for example.

Encounters:

• Well, Trolls are scrourge in Norsca. Maybe there should be encounter with them too. But to make some encounter, like with more Bjornlings (or more likely with Aeslings or Baernsonlings), more interesting you could rule that hostile encounter has beastmaster among them and trainer war-troll.
• Combat encounter in the frozen lake could be interesting. I have build some rules for movement in the Ice. Balance cheks. And then also Ice Thickness... all this in the document.
• Unholy site (like corrupted Siedi Stone) where powerful Vitki or Sorcerer (or maybe even few) have opened succesfully rift to Aethyr. Because this, few Daemons have been able to enter the realm. This encounter can be treated in many ways.
• Horde. Followers of one of the Dark Gods are on the move! Huge army is moving (marauders, war mammoths, Chaos Champion...). This army is encountered in some bad spot, like small valley. Do the "heroes" join up and swear loyalty to these followers (for example if they worship Tchar to Nurgle)? Or lie and try to sneak away later?

Even the WFRP3 rules for Norsca are still on the way - Here are few cards I have created. Could be some use to you:

Kalevalahammer - WFRP3 New Cards

• Cold -conditon (first Resistance failure against freezing weather)
• Hypothermic -condition (second Resistance failure against freezing weather)
• Slippery Ice -location (some rules when moving on ice)
• Snowfall -tracking card (heavy snowfall and blizzard rules)

jackdays said:

Great work - btw have you considered making drunk people more susceptible to Charm and guile checks ...and less susceptible to intimidate and leadership checks

Or alternatively we just need a houserule saying that any time you try a charm check vs. a drunk person - you can count your Fel as being one point higher!

I humbly suggest the above, after extensive research having both put my own body on the line as well as observing others ...particular those of alternate chromosome combination than my own - All in the desire to bring forth reliable empirical data for this board to base its house rules on, ......

Boehm said:

Little off-topic... I had topic about my "Alcohol & Topacco Expansion" rules too. Anyways... The idea is that those drunken penalties (from various levels of toxication) affect all the skills (physical and mental) and this way also to any checks to resist things like charm and guile. Only exception should be Unsettling, Intimidate, Fear, Terror... But maybe the intimidate part is not so well presented in the WFRP3 rules (WFRP1 and WFRP2 rules should have it).

But, I like to think that the extra fortune die on the cards (with the penalties) is that "Drunken Luck" aspect. It could be considered also the bonus against intimidate...

Thanks for the suggestions people. I've allready used your Norsca content extensively Jackdays I hadn't seen your cards for winter effects though. I'm problably using those from next session and onwards.

I played the second session yesterday where I'd just scribbled some keywords on a post-it. So I pretty much made stuff up as I went along. This is how it went:

The PCs woke up the next morning under a cover of snow to discover that a thick fog had decended on the woods during the night.

(Easy Resilience test for cold, both pass)

The players recieved a list of all the equipment they had, how much each item weighed and how much each person could cary without becoming fatigued. After some calculating they split everything up, with the thralls taking a slightly havier load, but left one extra sleeping-fur behind to lessen the weight.

As they're packing up, the PCs notice the bjornling thralls whispering and glancing at the grealings. The PC Marauder approaches them and tries to say a few words to establish a feeling of being in this together. The bjornlings just look at him without comment.

After traveling thorugh the woods for a while, they discover they've been traveling slightly off course and are getting closer to the mountains than they should. The fog is making it hard to navigate. They correct their course.

After a while, the hunter up front shouts. He saw a large shape dissappear in the mist. In the snow it left a freshly killed deer. Examining the tracks, they identify the predator as an ymir. They choose not to take any of the meet from the deer, as they have enough food and don't want to eat something that's been slobbered over by an ymir.

Later, the PC Reaver on rear guard hears a twig snap behind him. He halts the party and investigates, but finds nothing.

As they make camp, the PC Marauder (who's the leader) decides that the bjornling thralls will take part in the watch circulation so he has a better chance of healing his wounds from the fight against the wolves. The PC Reaver is sceptical about this, but the Marauder insists that the bjornlings are too honourable to do anything.

(Normal Observation test, both fail)

They are woken by a scream in the night. It is about an hour until daylight and as they look around the camp, they see both the bjornlings and their hunter missing. Examining the campsite they find one set of prints of a yeti dragging something through the snow northwards towards the mountains. Another set of three footprints head sourwest wards towards the mountains separating the graeling and bjornling lands.

Once the first bjornling went on guard, they snuck away. The Ymir then attacked while there was no guard.

The Marauder tell the three other graeling warriors to stay at the camp and take stock of what is missing while he and the Reaver go after the ymir.

They easily follow the ymirs tracks back to its cave, where they kill it in a short but furious fight. They both take one of its teeth as a trophy. Inside the cave, they find the hunter, still alive but pretty out of it. The marauder also finds a metal armband with intricate carvings among the bones on the cave floor.

Returning to camp, they find that the bjornlings have stolen about two thirds of the food. There's hardly enough left to get the party to Jerngard. They set out after the bjornling thralls without their equipment to travel light.

(Each character rolls Eay Agility check. I roll one Easy Agility check for the bjornlings. Each success is one move along a tracker)

After chasing the bjornlings for almost half a day, they finally overtake them and make them surrender. The bjornlings are relieved of their knives, leaving them completely weapon-less in any later encounters. They return to camp and go to sleep, seeing as the day is wasted. It is decided that the bjornlings are not to be fed this night.

Another days travel goes by without any problems. The fog still makes it hard to navigate though, and the party is falling behind their scedual.

The next day, the fog has all but cleared, but the weather is getting colder. They decide that the hunter and another Graeling warrior split their efforts between navigating and hunting.

They still do not make progress as fast as they should, but they manage to kill a buck. When inspected, it appears touched by the gods. It's antlers are huge and growing thorns, and its teeth are sharp like a predators. They decide to eat as much as they can of it this night, to spare their own rations.

(Hard Resilience test. Everyone fails and recieves 1 Corruption)

The next day, they discover some trees with totems of bone tied to them. Examening the totems, they see they are carved with the symbols of Viha. They follow the totems for a little while and come to a small altar to Viha. At its base is heaped skulls, claws, teeth and weapons. The Marauder cuts his palm and offers some of his blood to Viha.

They make camp as the snow starts to fall again.They are about three days travel away from Jerngard and have barely enough food.