So I'm getting a few players together and hopefully running a few games of wfrp with a distinctly evil tone.

The party are all members of a secret society called the Esoteric Society of Wellwishers that DEFINITELY ISN'T A CHAOS CULT.

They occasionally get requested to perform tasks for the society and attend meetings. Using the secret society sheets, they can rise or fall in the ranks of the society as they complete or fail miserabely to complete, these tasks.

An interesting mechanic I was thinking of putting in was a Cover Story Tracker.

At the outset of each adventure, the group comes up with a story based on what their goal is and what they plan to tell people asking them what exactly they are doing. As the cover story gets eroded by bad roleplaying, breaking their story or fibbing, so the party tension will raise and they get closer to being unmasked. There is also a "Heat" event on the tracker, depending on how risky their story is, the event will occur sooner or later, when the cover story tracker decends below the "Heat" tracker, the heat is on! Various parties are now asking why the group is sticking their nose in other people's business and people are looking into their background. They take misfortune or challange dice to investigation attempts AND there is now a powerful, independant investigator on thier tale, possibly wearing a tall, wide brimmed hat...

sounds nice so far! im intrested in how it plays out.

the perfect scenario to run if you like secrety stuff and such is always an eye for an eye, which could easily be adapted to that concept!

cheers

neph

if I understood correctly, you are not going to tell the players where the HEAT event is located. that sounds a great idea to me, because every move on the tracker is bound to get the players holding their breaths. and you can judge where is the best place to put the HEAT event based on the complications of each cover story and context.

do you plan to run printed adventures or create your own? I'm running the printed ones with the PCs being a group of scoundrels, it's being interesting to convert the scenarios so that they focus on the tiers the characters are most likely to try to contact. for example, we are about to start The Gathering Storm and I don't imagine the PCs going to as for help for the Watch Captain or even the Burgomeister until things get so messy they don't see any other option. I imagine them trying to gather a bunch of poor workers as a gang before trying help with the law. and maybe they will contact the Burgomeister to try and blackmail him, which could work in the same way as the adventure is targeted, but with completely different flavor.

Thanks for the input, hadn't condsidered not telling them when the heat is on. Let them figure it out for themselves eh? I like it.

I was planning on using mostly printed adventures, namely the stuff based around Ubersreik. I would aim to start with eye for an eye, have a self written adventure and then maybe go through EoN and MoD.

I hope the group will go with nobles, magic users and other social, smart characters. If they go with a pile of buff morons I can use that too.

for criminal characters, specially low budget ones, I strongly recommend Liber Fanatica Criminal Empire. it has helped me a lot focusing Ubersreik into poorer focus.

I also recommend listening to Doc Cthulhu's Ubersreik adventures in Reckless Dice podcast, if you haven't already. Lots of great ideas there.

I will have a look at that at some stage, we're nearly done with an eye for an eye, we just have the small matter of the beastmen to deal with.

After that it's back to Altdorf, where I plan on making them sweat out how to misdirect a witch hunter investigating their society. I hope it'll be pretty free form, any suggestions?

Yep, running session tonight, going into Edge of Night, I have made precisely F*CK ALL preparation.

I think I'll just let them go shopping or some such.