I have run SoB 5 times since it's original release. Four times using v1, once under v2. I now have a new group who are keen to go through it.

I am looking for any feedback from players and GMs alike who've played or run SoB in the past. I'd love to hear your experience. What worked? What didn't? What was added or dropped that was fun or useful? What should be highlighted? What should be ignored? Did you work in/reveal the Gideon/Teugen agreement? If so, how?

I am not overly concerned with converting stats/npcs, etc. I've started creating location cards for major spots and outlined some encounters. But I am eager to get some fresh perspective on an adventure I know incredibly well.

Thanks!

I successfully ran Shadows Over Ubersreik. Meaning that I mixed the Edge of Night and Shadows Over Bögenhafen together. Though my players (naturally) screw the whole thing up I can recommend it to you.

Silly old me. Here's a link to my gaming blog here at FFG for the said campaign. LINK

Ah great! I read through the thread this weekend. Gave me some wonderful ideas.

Cheers!

We're playing through Shadows Over Bogenhafen now, have about two sessions remaining I think. We've had lots of fun. I have neither played, nor been a gamemaster for TEW campaign before (but have been itching to try it out for over ten years), so it's really a dream come through to play it now. I think the hardest thing have been to not say no to anything, but rather let the PC's try their chances. Old WFRP dealt in absolutes, while 3e is not supposed to do that. This has led to some interesting situations when the PCs have succeeded in doing stuff (with 4 purple dice+ additional blacks) that should not really have been possible. But I have been prepared for most of these things.

So far these are the things that have worked good (+), and bad (-) in my interpretation of SOB in WFRP3e:

(and well, HERE BE SPOILERS, maybe this should be in the GM subforum?):

+ I've been using the creature cards for almost all NPCs. This means that I haven't had to do much work converting them.

+ I have been doing all dice rolls in public, which means that the PCs have had to roleplay properly. I was worried about this before starting, but I think it adds a bit of tension. I also tend to ask them for Observation and Intuition rolls now and then for no reason, just to keep them on their toes.

+ The visit to the fairgrounds and hunt through the sewers was fun. I used the Rat Swarm creature card and creature group card, which worked very nicely vs my 3 brave adventurers. Also made a couple of disease checks to simulate the conditions (PCs were lucky though). I used a Chaos fury as the guardian demon (but boosted with the champion frame from Hero's call). The reckless gambler in my player group managed to convince the demon that they were hired agents of his masters' (yes, 4 purple+3 black dice…). It was fun though, and even more fun when they couldn't help trying to get to the iron locker, despite clear orders from the demon to stay away from it, chaos soon ensued.

+ Using the dice pool interpretations to give out clues. With the highly investigative nature of the adventure I think it has worked very nicely to use additional hammers/boons/comets to dole out the appropriate amount of info in the different scenes.

+ The PCs broke into the Steinhäger offices successfully. Was planning to play this with a tracker to simulate the risk of discovery, but they were quite creative so I had to improvise a lot. But this worked fine. I think 3e has wonderful mechanisms for doing "on-the-fly" adjustments.

+ I'm planning to use an event tracker for the final day before the ritual, which will allow the player actions to affect at what point they appear at the location. I haven't finalized this, but it seems doable.

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- The overall story arc of the investigation and the timing would probably have been better handled with a special tracker. But I wasn't able to make one that I felt would work, so in the end I went with the standard approach.

- Handouts have rewards/costs printed in GCs, as has a lot of other transactions. This needs to be converted into the new currency. I have not really been able to pinpoint a one-to-one relation of the old and new currency and have been doing this on the fly. I have frequently then forgotten to write down the conversion I used which has created problems in later sessions. I'm now going with 1GC=1 silver, but adapting this in some places.

- With more time it would probably have been good if I could have created more location rules.

- I've found the the abstract range system to be a bit messy (at least when you go beyond medium range and have multiple engagements). But this is not really worse for SOB, it's more of a general remark.

- I could probably have done more to get a three act structure in place. What I did was to divide the adventure into three episodes: 1st from start to leaving sewers, 2nd reaching to when the PCs flee the Magirius house, and 3rd to the end. Each of these episode end also end an act. Then I've put in rally steps (and act changes) at times when it felt appropriate. It hasn't really worked that well though, maybe mainly because the 2nd episode have been played over many sessions and a quite long time span.

Anyway, good luck with running the adventure! I'm now reading through Death on the Reik and can't wait to start playing that in a while…

gruntl said:

Great stuff! Welcome to TEW! Hope your players are enjoying it!

I did debate putting this in the GM section, but if there were any players out there I wanted to hear from their experiences as well. Particularly if they found something too odd, difficult, confusing, or if something was particularly effective in their sessions. Trying to find ways to spruce up what has almost become a rote delivery at this point. In fact, I am so comfortable with the details and timeline of events and places that I could probably wing it, but I want to add some new things I hadn't thought of.

Cheers!