Good Evening fellow Gms of the Fantasy Flight Forums... I've been running a small series of adventures that might or not become a campaign, at first with already built adventures from the books so I may gather experience to build my own adventures since I'm rather new to the Warhammer Rpg.

While my group of players had no problem in accepting and in some cases embracing Warhammer's gargantuan proportions of buildings, ships, and such... playing "Shattered Hope" with them was almost a nightmare in the first session. They kept asking questions, for example how huge tanks of promithium were placed inside a room where the only entrance is a small door, and why there would be such tanks in the Shatters, a place renowned by the poverty of the dwellers. I had to 'hijack' the adventure and add hooks and small plots, for example that the part of the shatters where the adventure took place had backing from the brotherhood of Malice and some black markets, so the workers didn't stumbled on the crystal blindly. While said questions and inquisitive nature were welcomed, it kinda boggled up a small adventure.

This being said, they're now starting the adventure "Illumination", and while reading the adventure, preparing for the gaming sessions, I realized something peculiar:

For the Sole Imperium-controlled town in the whole world, charged of processing a global level of Ghostfire flowers and turning them into chemicals and then giving out supplies and weapons for the warlords... Port Suffering is -really- small. Too small.

I'm thinking in doing two things, and I wanted your opinion on this: A- Quadruplicate the town's size, at least, making it a real industrial power and B- To avoid making Port Suffering -too- big, I'd change that the harvest and deliveries of Ghostfire powder are made through the whole year through different, frequent trading ships, with each deposit of Ghostfire harvests being dutifully noted by the local Admnistratum, after all, they aren't stupid enough to attempt to lie or dupe the local warlords. Each five years, the Imperium Tithe ship would arrive and based on information transmitted from Port Suffering, they would send the supplies directly to the warlords through drop-crates (jets and chutes), after all, locating large concentrations of madmen in a desert would be a piece of cake for an auspex tech.

The second thing I wanted to ask is... Something quite interesting and honestly fun happened while I started the adventure. Instead of sitting Idle at the Brazen Skies ship, yep, that ship of the beginning, the one that shouldn't take fifteen minutes to narrate, the players asked me to explore the ship and interact with the crew. The group's Techpriest ended having a nice chat with the chief engineer of the ship, and while trying to fix the ship's administratum copy machine, he hugged it and caressed it tenderly while speaking in binary how everything would be all right, that the 'ignorant monkeys' wouldn't harm it again...

How much xp should I award the players with? The book says '200xp', but the players believe that such xp should be given while under really stressful situations. (like missions, be them shooty, stealthy, or talky) and I honestly agree. I'm thinking of awarding them 100xp, and giving the techpriest 50xp extra for that scene, but I'm afraid of making them level too fast or start trying to "hog for xp" through 'silly' roleplaying. What should I do?

One nice reward that I find helps focus players attention without unbalancing the game long-term is the 'temporary fate point' - that is, you get an extra fate point for the rest of the session only .

If the players haven't really done anything, then yeah, I'd stick to 50-100Xp at most.

The comment about Port Suffering being too small is a fair one but it depends on the amount of ghostfire that actually gets processed per year. Remember; combat drugs are not standard issue, even for the Imperial Guard, and you don't know how 'rare' a harvestable crop of ghostfire flowers actually are. If a major clan war is only likely to produce one, which translates into a ton or so of pollen, tops, then Port Suffering doesn't need to be any bigger than it is.

Along with the small harvests that allow Port Suffering to be so small, Iocanthos is also part of the Calixus Sector's major planets. The other two being Sepheris Secundus and the major hive world who's name escapes me. There is a constant flow of ships that move between the three, so shipments of Ghostfire are probably quite regular.