Hey Spivo, that's pretty much what I did - choose your background, they I sort out careers suited to it by trait (you can nominate one trait from background to be assured) of all the ones I sort out 3 are picked as the actual "ones to chose among".

We have dwarf outcast trollslayer (dwarfhold tbd), high elf academic student, averland human noble pistolier (will spend CP's for affluenc and be noble), averland criminal forger and ostland foriegn messenger (has yet to tell me from where in Ostland, I don't think he knows Wolfenburg's fate though actually his backstory makes it more likely north on the coast). Mostly comrades from BF pass with that as bond, the elf (who ended up fighting there purely through misadventure) having improbably saved the dwarf's life explaining that odd coexistence.

The little plays are fun. Might use some of that as recurring background events. Puppet shows one time, actors in Plenzerplatz putting on a "Scene" from a play to help sell tickets at Sulky Sun another time etc.

PS, I realized my materials mispell the Captain's name as Baerfast instead of Baerfaust. I always explain such things in handouts etc. to players as simply being the fact the Old World has not developed standardized spelling (or grammar) so my handouts never have "errors' just "realistic effects"

So we kicked of.

Random careers looks good so far.

I have a dwarf outlaw (he shot a wizards apprentice by mistake at 3rd Black Fire, causing a minor diplomatic problem) Bounty Hunter (he wanted to play dwarf, don't think career meant much to him).

A criminal human gambler, he really wanted something different, and so far he's liking it.

A battle-hardened human scout, also one he wanted to play.

Finally a foreign messenger (from Reikland, didn't want to play non-human, and don't know much about other nations) minstrel… He did not envision this, and might take some time to come to terms with this

I must also say, that of the 4 backgrounds we've tried, the foreign messenger comes of weakest in terms of motivation. I've made the letters as a complicated string. One is for Luminous Mauer, one for Kaufman, one for the PC scout and one for the Verena priest.

It all starts with the letter to the scout which signs the scout up to protect the minstrel for things to come (the minstrels patron/lord had a son at 3rd Black Fire which the scout protected through the fight).

Then he wants to buy some of the items Kaufman brought home, which is why he picked the minstrel due to his taste/knowledge of culture.

Then he wants Mauer to testify the items are not of some demonic origin (can't have wicked stuff brought back, would be fun, but also ruin his standing in important circles etc…), finally he wants the Verena church to handle the legal documents…

All will though be halted at Kaufman, as he wont sell, but he does propose another offer to the PC.

Yeah, I also had the opinion that the Foreign Messenger was the weakest of the backgrounds and ended up excluding it. The other five have much closer ties to Averheim and some of its residents

Delwyn said:

I should have done the same.

If he plays his character to the letter, what he does is try to hand over his letters asap, which gives him pretty much no reason to hang around near the docks. Only background that makes him go there, is the letter to another player, and after delivering that he should be moving.

A better background would have been if his patron had instructed him to observe and befriend either of two of the other backgrounds, due to some reason. Could be the academic has written some interesting, or dangerous thesis, or the gently's family has a vote in the upcomming distribution of trade rights, or that the outlaw did something to anger the patron, etc…

Spivo said:

It actually does. It's the only background that explicity has orders to help the NPCs.

Thanks for all the ideas; after reading it here are some things I'm thinking about:

I love the idea of PCs being more involved with the Menagerie. I think the idea about "trying to keep the guests happy so they are more likely to buy an item from the expedition" would make a fun challenge. We'll start a "guest fun" meter at 3 and it can go up or down depending on how the characters interact/intervene in the following situations. The players need to remember they are trying to make guests happy (ie agree with them or assure them), not push their own (or their characters) viewpoints. I see the occasion as a drinking event and even though the PCs are gaurds the "noble folk" mingle some with them or just decide to "get a common gaurds opinion to laugh at" or try to prove one of the other nobles wrong "see, if he thinks that then everyone does". Also remember that the players might be thought of highly by the nobles for dealing with the bandits. I think this best fits in on "mingling with guests" page 51.

1) The top non Leitdorf contender "Marlene Von Alptraum's habit of accompanying her cattle drovers" (page21; In these circles, that is awful behaviour except to Clothilde.)

2) Was Marius *really* crazy. (of course he was, even to the Leitdorfs, but they do take kindly to anyone who defends Marius by saying leadership is very hard and sometimes drives you insane).

3) Did Bearfast make a tactical blunder that killed Marius? Did he do it on purpose? (regardless of the real answer to this, the players need to convince the guests that Bearfast is a loyal Averlander who made no mistakes. exception is the halfing, where if the players can quietly tell them they think Beerfast is a moron then the fun meter goes up by 2; drunk halflings dancing on the tables mean party!!!)

4) How bad is the trouble down at the docks? I heard there were more dead people than usual. Is there some now criminal mastermind? (regardless of what the PCs have found, "party fun" is best served by assuring the people that everything is under control.)

5) Will the trouble in Kislev spill south and Averland need to send troops to war? (as someone said previously, this is a great time to foreshadow the next chapter. players of course best serve party fun by saying "no no that is just typical chaos warband stuff it shouldn't be a problem")

6) One of the "ladies in waiting" asks a PC what he thinks about that "lizard-person in the cage." (i love the idea of having the expedition bring back a lizardman; a description of intelligent eyes and maybe trying to communicate I think gives some nice tension; a player might want to free it! of course the "fun meter" answer to the lady is that the creature is mindless and has no feelings).

7) Other - if they are "heros" from the bandit encounter, then maybe one of them (paging gently-born) gets introduced by Clothhilde to a lady in waiting and he has some skill he can show off (this is ripe for a bard song about a little number i tossed off recently in the carribean…)

I plan to direct one or two of these toward each player and of course the whole party will see how that characters reaction affects the fun meter.

The events listed (halfling joke, witchhunter, sick, etc) drop the party fun meter but PC response can bring it back up (like convincing halfling not to leave as suggested earlier, first aid on Leitdorf).

Grandmartoni,

We are on much the same page. I like playing up the intelligent lizard man more. Only a primitive tribal creature but one that may have its own (superstition and misinformaton laden) views of the effigy, gold plaque etc. if only it could be communicated with somehow.

My rewrite of the menagerie scene (did you email me for a copy, almost sounds like you're riffing on it, which is what I mean by we're on same page) uses a tracker for the event. Various "planned activities" move it up and various threats my move it down, with the heroes having chances to ameliorate threats of moving down as well as aid in moving up. Moving up increases interest in buying displayed (and other, these are only part of the haul from Southlands) trinkets at good prices and makes it all profitable for von Kaufman as well as doing his reputation well (and earning the PCs bonus pay, at one point they are described as getting 20 silver, anotehr 30, I go with 20 silver with bonus pay moving up with the tracker).

I like some of your suggestions of "topics of conversation" as interesting additions. My PC's would include a noble battle scarred veteran who was there for the final actions of Baerfast etc. at BF Pass and might be asked about that, and a shady guy from the lower part of town who might be asked about rumours of a new criminal mastermind (sounds romantic to a lady in waiting), and an agent of an Ostland noble family with trading concerns in south who is logical to ask about "rumorus of trouble in the north".

Played 1½ session so far (6 hours), and the party has now reached day 2 having saved the barge from fire.

I have the following hints/comments:

- Do your homework! I've yet to run a campaign where every page needs to be memorised (or written down as "quick-notes") this much. Every single page so far has held a huge amount of important details. In parts this is a good thing, I'm beginning to understand how come this book can span a campaign that takes the party to epic career ranks. But I also think some sort of look-up sections would have been appropriate…

My players are asking a TON of questions, many which I was not prepared to answer, and so had to improvise greatly. Like where did Rolf Haller live? No clue…

- Pre-made chars: I wish I had made 6 pre-made chars, linked to the backgrounds, and let the players pick. This would have given a better backgroundstory, in regards to their knowledge of the npc's. For example the Foreign Messengers letters, what's in them? What instruction did his master give him?

- Pacing: I was stunned at our pace so far, a little more than 1 day has passed, spending 6 hours playing. I like it… think my players wants to speed things up a bit though.

- Black Cowl: My players are all over this, the first evening they began staking out the Upright Pig, of signs of his thugs, himself etc… Imo, it's my fault for making him to "sudden". I should gradually have built it up, starting with "Frederick says there's a new upstart leader among thugs at the docks, wouldn't give him to much thought yet", and after a few days "Mathilda looks nervous at you, are you working for him now?".

Instead I made him sound dangerous to begin with, but am lacking any real evidence, such as "that group of thugs all works for him now".

@ lol riffing nice. Id love to read your stuff but i cant figure out how to pm here.

So i started my group in "pit fighter" prison and that has worked well. Next session they should get out and be thrust into the docks!!!

The big problem i forsee having is some of the party already wants to throw in with the BC. And my gambler crook wants to BE a BC. Fun times ahead.

Valvorik,

would love to read your rewrite of the menagerie scene and take a look at the cards. For some unknown reason, can't seem to send you a pm, so could you please send them to my e-mail lemelopes at yahoo dot com dot br?

Thanks for the great work in this topic!

Starting this next week

PC's are

Gently Born Averlander Male Fop

Academic Averlander Male Apprentice Grey Wizard

Criminal Reiklander Male Thief

Battle-Scarred Middenlander Male Bounty Hunter

Outlaw High Elf Female Swordmaster

Thinking of Changing someof the encounters toinclude Orcs and Goblins allowing the Averlanders some benefit from their racial traits.

Will start by having an infestationof Goblins and Snotlings in the Dock area possiblebehind the recent killings???

Maybe swapout bandits for Orcs and Goblins, taking their lead from a mysterious 'Uman in a 'Ood.

I think greenskins in addition to bandits is a good way to go, keeping bandits who include former soldiers, have pistols with Averheim markings are part of the reason Kaufman distrusts Baerfast come the Menagerie day and excludes his soldiers from event, bringing in his own etc.

A couple questions my players hit me with i wasn't ready for:

1) what is "the watch" opinion of the BC?

2) I'm an elf so i can stake out the white horse day & night right?

I said the watch have heard of the BC but don't care. "Crooks fighting crooks aint our problem"

Spent a lot of time searching for elf sleep reqs and couldnt find anything. Ruled that panzy elves need sleep in the old world (unlike d&d where they only need 4 hours)

(1) In my game the Black Cowl has intimidated/bought off mid-level watch officers down to keep word percolating up the Averburg. As far as the pubic opinion goes there is some ebb and flow in the crime world but what can you expect, someone's making a play, in a few months it will be turned on its head as someone else does. Indirectly, the lack of official knowledge/action is a hint about the extent the Brotherhood of the Black Cowl has "friends in high places" and has blackmailed judges and others to look other way.

(2) I don't see in rules or fiction anything about Old World elves not sleeping same as everyone one else too - this edition or 2nd. They have no bonus vs being fatigued etc.. I use a time clock like Winds of Change for night activity and if you didn't nap in day, being up late means more and more misfortune dice and other difficulties and race makes no difference only Toughness/Resilience does (so actually a dwarf is a better bet than an elf for up all night action).

That said, I've had players try to stake out parts of docks (suffering penatlies then deciding to sleep till noon and 'offset their clock'. Gave them a shot (long one but shot) at witnessing one of the "hits" on hold out crime figure but they missed out. They tried again different tactic (yet to post that session report) but just happened to not be right place/right time to spot anything.

On a separate point (actual reason I came to thread again), I just played the mutant fight on first "working for Red Arrow/Weiss/Kaufman" mission. With 5 PC's, those mutants are barely a speed bump (even if not surprised). Once again I am reminded that it seems most encounters are balanced thinking 3 PC's and if you have more you may need to adjust.

Rob

I dont' know if you guys are doing a wiki, but we have been for our campaign:

I'm starting to think that 30 sessions would be optimistic. We're probably looking at half that, but I run a fast game.

Interesting.

I like wikis for gaming and was using one for last D&D campaign some time back, but after I found not all players really contributing nor reading (a wiki is really useful for collective effort, if 80% of content is GM, a message board is fine is my view). My own table of players is pretty much as "we can read messsage board (maybe) once between sessions, otherwise if it's not at the table, don't have time for it". My own time commitment as GM is obviously more than that but I understand if for some "roleplaying is 1 night a week, that's the time I can give it" as long as "you are really giving it that time when you are here" (which my players do).

Per my actual play thread, we're at 3 sessions, 6.5 hours of play (not counting advance selection etc. time) and are mostly through Day 4.

I think part will depend how much a GM fleshes out travel encounters and the tasks to get ritual ingredients in Middenheim - those can all easily add the equivalent of mutiple acts.

Yeah I think that like everything, how fast the game moves is mainly in the hands of the GM. My group has only had 1 session so far, but it looks like we are faster than what they are assuming you will be. I'm thinking 10-12 sessions (not counting the optional epilogue), though our sessions are sort of "marathon" ones that go all day on a Saturday (so like 8 hours or so).

Emirikol said:

I usually just use the wiki or obsidian portal mainly in the beginning as a dumping grounds for information. IC and OOC occurs via Yahoogroups.

jh

valvorik said:

Yep, I noticed the same thing during my last session - also with 5 PCs. I'll definitely be upping the opposition for future battle scenes.

If anyone's interested, I've set up a blog for the game - the last two sessions haven't been documented yet, it can be tricky at times to motivate players to put in more effort beyond turning up to the game

Amazing thread here, folks. Lots of helpful ideas. Valvorik, expect a PM from me today to beg you for your table aids and stuff.

My group just made characters yesterday, we'll be starting The Enemy Within next week. It went amazingly well. Really love the background cards, and everything that brought to their back stories. Our characters are:

• Human Gently-Born Pistolier
• Human Academic Wizard (of the Bright Order)
• Human Criminal Initiate (of Ranald)
• Dwarf Battle-Scarred Apprentice Runesmith

The dwarf player wanted to be a troll-slayer, and so has asked me to intentionally dishonor him with some horrible tragedy somewhere around session 8 to 11 so he can troll-slayer as his second career. I love it when players actually ask you to be mean to their characters! His starting with the runesmith skills and intelligence will give a lot of depth to the otherwise sometimes one-dimensional slayer concept. Any suggestions on how to dishonor him within the framework of the adventure?

Figure I'm going to have to buff up the fight scenes a bit beyond what the scenario lists, as 3 of our 4 characters are going to be very good in a fight. The pistolier and runesmith both have very solid attack actions, large dice pools, and decent defences. The bright order wizard is a glass cannon, but should be able to pull off at least one really remarkable attack at the start of each battle. The least martial of the group is the Initiate, but even she's got plenty of defences and a few buff-blessings to contribute significantly when blades are drawn. 50% more foes per fight seems like a good start.

There was some confusion about which background cards got picked, which resulted in several players answering questions about the "outcast character" - who didn't exist. But their answers were really good, so we decided the Pistolier's brother was the Outcast, and had been disowned by their villainous father. If anyone dies (or loses a leg thanks to Omens of War), they'll grab the outcast card and have an easy entry for their next character by playing the brother. The other awesome thing that came up out of this outcast situation was that the players made up all sorts of background about the Pistolier's family. They decided that Pistolier's father has possibly dabbled in black magic, spontaneously creating an NPC for me to use as red herring or perhaps a liutenant to the BC. They took the Oathbound Party card to represent that they are all sworn to prevent the father's villainy from coming to fruition -OR- ruining the family name. So they can't just pass him off to the witch-hunters.

Observation about Pistolier and starting funds: A riding horse is 2 gold. A pistol is 5 gold. The career ability (and fluff text) pretty much begs that you start with both, but Affluent only gives you 5 gold to play with. Even with a poor-quality (half price, but adds misfortune die) pistol, that leaves you no money for armour or other equipment. This seems like a huge flaw in that Basic Career card. My player solved this with a great answer to question #5 on the Gently Born card: she'd recently pawned the family heirloom pistol to Mathilda Durbein, and was hoping to buy it back soon. Explains her bad starting equipment, and establishes both a plot hook and the existence of a superior-quality gun on the market for once they've earned some spending cash.

rb: I want to alert you to the iniate of ranald. There really aren't many/any interesting rank 2 spells for Ranald. I allowed them to choose one spell outside of their order that was relevant.

Also the find object spell becomes problematic sometimes. Be ready for it.

jh

Emirikol said:

Thank you for the head's up on both of those issues. I'll take a little walk through the blessings today and see how bad it gets.

You're right about that "X Marks the Spot" blessing, which is also odd for Ranald. Ranald's only reason to locate things is to find where things one wishes to "acquire" are hidden etc. (e.g., where in this cluttered room is the secret strongbox). I would happily rule that the blessing only works for that purpose - you intend to steal the item in order to possess it, profit or serve Ranald's interests or simply "disappear" the card from the game and replace it with "a blessing to find exact location of something you know is within close range" (essentially use blessing instead of a potentially time consuming search of your location) where if you are "wrong" about the target being nearby you suffer an ill effect.

Most of the Ranald blessings have equivalents in the 2nd Edition Tome of Salvantion, I don't see this one though.

It is not a way of finding "where is the warpstone blade wielded by that assassin who escaped us last night".

Okay folks - as I come to the last bits of Part One, wondering if anyone has played further on and has comments or some work to share.

For example, it occurs to me that on the trip to Middenheim, text in Averheim and in Middenheim indicates Adele K. left just before PCs and arrives just before them - so word of the passage of her coach might be picked up at times along the way. It's likely important PC's don't overtake her so her coach probably should have comfortable lead it only looses in last part of the journey.

Has anyone hit any glitches such as the one that inspired this whole thread or done up any additional expansion encounters on the road?

Our group is now two sessions into this campaign and I must admit I'm frustrated with it, and my players are rather lost.

The first part of Book 1 seems broken up as follows:

1. The players are looking into the disappearances of various people.

2. Black Cowl is making moves.

3. Eventually, Curd Weiss will show up and try and get the players to investigate something completely different.

It strikes me that 1 and 2 are nothing but setting the scene and the players really don't need to be involved in either. The Black Cowl is meant to be taking over and there is nothing the players are meant to do about it; meanwhile, the skaven are meant to be kidnapping people and there's nothing the players are meant to be able to do about it. Both of these events need to be completed, despite the fact the players should be actively looking for clues to one, and will immediately try and get involved with the the other. This is somewhat frustrating as the players are going to be constantly running in to brickwalls or finding no clues. That's not fun for me, and not fun for them.

3 is where the players will eventually get properly involved in the plot (sort of), but the whole thread comes from out of nowhere. In fact, as written Luminary Mauer warns the players against making connections between the disappearances and the gangland murders - so unless they are the type to be motivated by money (which my players aren't, for the most part), they shouldn't feel in any way inclined to help Curd other than because the plot thread is there. Curd's suggestion that his problems and the problems of the Docks are connected contradicts what Mauer warns against - that makes sense for the characters, but is frustrating for me to put those two perspectives across one after the other. I feel like I'm just frustrating the players and making them feel further lost (and given that some of my players are easily lost in the most simple of plots, that's problematic).

At the moment we are approaching Day 3 which should have Mauer and Weiss arrive in the Docks. The players, having interrogated one of the arsonists, have learnt that the arsonists were planning on meeting a higher-up in an alleyway (an asspull I had to make on the spot). What I'm thinking of doing, since the players are sort of working on Luminary Mauer's behalf, is that when he shows up on Day 3 he'll talk with them about the murders, and then the disappearances. If the players decide to tell him they think the two are connected, he'll chastise them for doing so - perhaps more fiercely than suggested in the book (two of the characters are actually his charges - a young squire from Kislev and an apprentice wizard). He'll also chastise them for trying to get involved in the gangland violence, and will state that doing so is likely to get them killed. He'll then mention that Curd Weiss is looking for them, and perhaps a distraction from this grizzly business would be good for them. If they still opt to investigate the gangland murders, they'll find themselves up against stiffer resistance than the encounters I've thrown them before - perhaps even members of the mutant cult with a letter regarding attacking the roads to get them back to Curd.