SPOILER ALERT: This is the campaign log for the new The Enemy Within for Warhammer 3rd Ed. These events are from our third session. For the most part they are events from the 3rd in-character day of the campaign, except for one big event that normally wouldn't happen till at least Day 9 of the scenario as written, and a part of a conversation that by default happens on Day 5 instead. Proceed with caution if you think you're ever going to play this campaign, as events discussed here include MAJOR SPOILERS. This post picks up after my previous one, and details the other events of the 3rd session. We ran over by an hour, and nobody noticed (or wanted to quit) at the point I finally said "fade to black". PC List/Reminder: • Burgolt the Nobleman Pistolier • Hrulgar the Dwarven Runesmith • Ninewise the Initiate of Ranald • Lina the Bright Wizard Let's see, we where on Day 3, and the PCs were attending to a number of tasks in various parts of town. Is there anything I still needed to say about that? **Consults notes, realizes there certainly is.** Well, then… Backing Up to the Captain-Dwarf talk. In my last post, I forgot to mention one very important fact that came up when Hrulgar was talking with Captain Baerfaust. Bischoff, the enforcer and faceman of the Black Cowl's organization down on the docks, was mentioned by name to the Captain. Baerfaust responded with a bit of shock at this. He knew Bischoff. He's ex-military, a former NCO of the Averheim Greatswords. When the Templeman Expedition was being put together by Johann Templeman and Graf Friederich von Kaufman, they knew they'd need some guards and men-at-arms. So they approached the Captain about hiring some of the soldiers under his command. The Captain was happy to oblige them. With no Elector-Count in the County, the Greatswords and their garrison and both running on shoestring budgets. So Baerfaust loaned to them a unit of soldiers who's contracts would be running out during the time the Expedition expected to be gone. Kaufman would cover their pay during that time, and Baerfaust hoped there'd be a new Elector before they returned. There isn't an Elector, things are just as dire as when they left, and some of the returning men (including Bischoff) did not re-up. Or at least I hope I got those points across. My notes are real clear about what I planned to say, but less precise about what actually did get said by the end of the scene. It's now been several weeks since that session, so it's hard to recall. Time marches on. The PCs go about their business, as mentioned in my last post. **Looks at his notes again.** That bit about the Witch-hunter. So much happened in this session, that I missed a few things when writing up the first half of it. I mentioned in my last post that Burgolt earlier went to collect his daily stipend from his father's money-keeper. What I neglected to mention in that post is a small detail I told Burgolt he noticed on his trip there. A witch-hunter was walking down his street. Female, with a hook (like a pirate), and the obvious witch-hunter hat. They didn't interact at all, but clearly the sight of a witch-hunter in a wealthy neighborhood is noteworthy, especially when you suspect your father of witchcraft. The PCs meet up back down at the docks, have lunch and compare notes. Ninewise hopes to talk to Ute again, but the info-broker isn't at her usual post just outside the White Horse tavern. They'll have to catch up with her later. **Evil GM giggle.** As they are leaving, they pass by a large crowd at the entrance to an alleyway, with some great light shining or reflecting beyond it. Elbowing their way through the crowd, they see a Light Wizard. Specifically, Luminary Konrad Mauer. (My players mishear me at first, and think the middle word part of his title instead of his name, Luminary-Comrade Mauer. Oops. Though I must admit that would be cool.) Lina and the Light Wizard Sidebar: Lina, being both a Wizard and having the Academic Background, has pretty strong ties to Mauer. Mauer is one of the heads of The Sun Society, a group of intellectuals that meet at the Journey's End Coaching Inn for dinner and a speech once a fortnight. A few times a year they publish a journal on topics esoteric, arcane, intellectual and verbose. The answers to the questions on the Academic Background card established that Lina is a member of the society and has previously published a paper on magical cauterization. When we reached the end of the first day of the campaign, I asked the players what they figured their housing situation was. The answer I was given for Lina was that she stayed in some sort of dormitory for apprentice wizards. Averheim isn't exactly the intellectual center of the Empire, so there's not really a College or University there, but it seemed likely that there might reasonably be a single multi-Order boarding house. A place where wizards can be with their own, and not have to worry about angry mobs or social prejudice. Since the adventure already includes Luminary Mauer as an important wizardy NPC, it seemed only natural that he be the Dorm Coordinator. Eyes glowing like lanterns, a gleaming aura shining around him, Mauer is anything but subtle. I chose to play Mauer for fun. He's an older fellow, terribly powerful but also quite eccentric. I basically broke out more or less the same persona I use for Dworkin in Amber campaigns. Crazy inspired genius meets dottering old man, prone to both flights of fancy and taking figurative statements literally. It's an easy persona for me to improvise, and I haven't had much opportunity to use it these past few years. Never fails to amuse the players. Mauer was investigating another body found on the docks. Since Lina knows him, it's not hard for a couple PCs to get behind the cordon of city guard. Ninewise quickly recognizes this body to be that of Herman Hallheimer, another local racketeer. The wounds show the same signs of poison/magic as Klaus Keller's body did. "Don't touch that! It's evil!" says Mauer to Lina, before covering his own finger with a glowing nimbus and then using it to probe the depth of the wounds. The two wizards share what they know about the bodies. Wounds are shallow, but corrupted. Bodies left as a message. Likely suspects, etc. The most important bit of info conveyed, perhaps, is one that has nothing to do with the body. Mauer says that he and the various apprentices at Chromatahaus were very worried when Lina didn't come home last night. The reason her roomies were so concerned was because there were some unsavory types at the end of the block who seemed to be watching the dorm. Mauer didn't like the looks of them, so he spent most of the night on the stoop making sure they didn't try anything. He chides Lina a bit about staying away from the dorm. In trying to explain that she crashed at Burgolt's place, Lina inadvertently gives Mauer the impression she was staying with a beau. "I was young once. Say no more. Given the skullduggery and murder that seems to be afoot, though, perhaps you could send discrete word if you aren't going to be coming home to the dorms at night. Then we wouldn't have to worry about you." We yammer on in-character for some time. As the wizards ham it up, Ninewise watches the crowd. She notices that her old friend Frederick Grosz is there. He seems quite worried, so when he leaves, she follows him. Per the Criminal Background, Grosz is responsible for Ninewise escaping the law. She was arrested by the Captain himself some time ago, and Grosz' testimony lead to her surprising acquittal. In the players answers to this, she established that Grosz honestly thought her innocent… at least of this. So rather than being a hardened criminal, our Grosz is at least a little more innocent than the default assumption for the story. He has at least a veneer of respectability, a reputation to maintain. Grosz heads back past the piers in the same route that the PCs just came from. He looks over his shoulder, but fails to notice Ninewise as he's actually looking for someone specific. He waits at the porch to the White Horse for a few stress-laden minutes, dotting at his sweaty brow with a kerchief. Ninewise approaches and asks for a minute of his time. They step inside for a drink, and Grosz glances about the room as if he's still looking for someone. They take a table in the corner and start to converse. With a charm roll and a bit of talking, Ninewise gets him to spill the beans about what's on his mind. Bischoff and the Black Cowl. This new criminal boss has been leaning on all the businessmen in the Wharf District, legitimate or otherwise. A lot of people have knuckled under, but not Grosz. Not yet, any way. He and a few others had been talking about standing up to this Bischoff fellow. Keller and Halheimer were going to be their strongmen for doing so, and now they're both dead. That leaves just him and Ute as the backbone of this resistance. Where the hell is Ute anyway? She was supposed to meet Grosz and Halheimer here this afternoon. At this point, Ninewise breaks out her trusty map and lucky coin. She says a prayer to Ranald, and pictures that off-tune hurdy-gurdy that Ute is always playing. The coin flips in the air, and lands so as to be partly covering the intersection of sepia and blue inks that marks the end of a pier. Ninewise rushes up from her seat and out on to the dock (leaving her map behind with Grosz, just in case she falls in like yesterday). She can't see the hurdy-gurdy, but standing on the end of that dock, she's sure it's out there somewhere beneath the waves. Does that mean foul play, or just someone got sick of her playing foul tunes? They've known each other for a while, so Ninewise heads off to Ute's tenement flat. No answer when she knocks. Ninewise breaks in, and looks for signs of a fight. Nothing. She tears through the closet, to figure out if there's any chance Ute is wearing something memorable. She's brass tier, so it seems reasonable that she only owns one pair of shoes. Back to the White Horse to get her map from Grosz. Elsewhere, the Initiates of Morr have taken away the body, so Mauer left and the other PCs returned to the bar to see if that's where Ninewise wandered off. They meet up, and talk about Grosz's revelations. Ninewise shares with them her concerns about Ute. By this point, the players are also worried that Lina might be on Bischoff's list, given her interactions with him re: the arson. Tension is high. The coin sails and lands again, this time directly on the part of the map that represents this very block. Ninewise's player gets a lot of successes and a chaos star. She gets a very clear sense of where those shoes are, very close and underground. They ask to check the bar's pantry and cellar, but there's no sign of Ute or her shoes. Ninewise is stressed, and can't get her mind off of it. She's got to find that shoe. NOW. What else is under that coin? It covers most of the block on the map. There's the gong-farmer / nightsoil merchant's place, and a couple tanneries. Burgolt, didn't you say something yesterday about a tannery being closed? As it turns out, the two temporarily-retired tanners are drinking just across the room. The PCs give them a bogus story about there being squatters in their property, and I invert the intoxication condition to boost their guile roll (so +2 Fortune, +1 Misfortune). Yes, once they've finished this drink, they'll go show you that their tanneries are still locked and boarded up per the city council's orders. SPOILERS! That's Day 9 stuff: As GM this worries me a bit, as the PCs aren't expected to connect the dots to the tannery for a couple more days. I'd been warned about that "X marks the spot" blessing. But I've GM'd Amber, Continuum and Gumshoe, so I'm no stranger to systems where the PCs have the ability to trivially shortcut the plot. Knowing the plot and stopping the plot are two very different things. Expecting things to go pear-shaped at the tannery, Lina steps outside to start channeling power and preparing beneficial buffs. Hrulgar follows close behind, since there's some concern that Lina may have made Bischoff's list. A well-dressed man (clearly out of his element) is approaching from the street and steps up to Lina, and seems to know her, though she does not know him. The "stranger" (who really shouldn't be, but I forgot that there was a more direct connection between Lina and this NPC) is flanked by two soldiers wearing the livery of the von Kaufman family. The man introduces himself as Curd Weiss. He says that Lina's room-mate (a Celestial Wizard) directed him to look for her here at the bar, because she (the room-mate) was unable to accept his business proposal. As much as they'd like to make some money, they don't have time for this. Ninewise gets a little snippy. That chaos star earlier means she's' got a Misfortune die on anything that doesn't get her closer to those shoes. They can't get rid of him fast enough. Party Tension Meter steps up to 5. Undaunted, Curd Weiss proposes that he and Lina meet at the Journey's End Coaching Inn in the morning, as he really does have a business opportunity for a wizard with a bit of courage. The drunk tanners stumble out. One of them has to step off the road and onto the crumbling retaining wall to "fill the Aver"… or rather, piss in the flooded mudflats that border the River Aver. This serves a few related purposes. It reminds the PCs that it rained horribly yesterday and the tanneries are closed because of flooding. They know they're about to get into a mess. I also get to drop a bit of trivia about how tanneries work in this era, and how if it was in business there'd probably be large pots outside for people to piss into, since uric acid is an important ingredient in the leather-treating process. It just keeps getting worse. They finally get the tanners on-track and willing to unlock the doors. Inside they find… that the time has run out on this rather packed session, and we're going to have to wait till next week to find out what's going on inside. End of Session 3. Tension 5, Agenda 5, Stability 7.

Emirikol said: In RPGs, free-will ruins games IMHO. The way that it works is this: If a player would be socially influenced by another character, the player can just disregard it and ignore it and do whatever he wants. For example: if the prostitute uses her "FLIRT" ability, the player can just say that her character ignores the effect using "Player Free Will." Without making the PC a puppet of the GM, I've always found it ironic that you can suffer a wound and not ignore that, but heaven forbid that a social action be a 'real' effect. Now, I don't really know which way wfrp pushes it, but now that I've really familiarized myself with the Lure of Power stuff, .. Isn't this exactly the point of Duel of Wits / Shame Threshold mechanics from Lure of Power are all about? It's basically Social Hit Points, so that you can give your NPCs some teeth in the social arena, without having "Flirt" be equivalent to "Mind Control". It's been a while since I've read it closely, but that was how I interpreted it.

Three Four points I'd like to make in regards to this topic: 1) Act, Episode and Encounter are rather defined very loosely in the game. If you look through the various supplements, you'll find both Encounters composed of multiple Acts and Acts composed of multiple Encounters. Rally steps can happen between either/any of these, but I would never consider them to be compulsory. The Rally step is meant to represent a few seconds break in the middle of some event. The end of an encounter is almost by definition a longer break than that. The Fatigue & Stress recovery of a rally step are almost always less than those of the end of an Encounter, unless you get a really lucky roll and/or have a very unusual dice pool (such as Toughness 2 but 3 ranks in Resilience). 2) I'm not sure where the notion is coming from that not having a Rally Step after the fight is over is somehow going to reduce the amount of healing the PCs have access to. Per page 65 of the main rulebook: "Outside of a structured encounter, a character can benefit from one successful First Aid check per scene, or per the GM's discretion." So there's no reason why a Rally Step would result in them getting more shots at healing than just a mundane scene change. There are a few spells and blessings that heal and say they recharge at the end of the Act, Encounter, or Rally Step. Rather than having to constantly field questions from the players about such things, I'd just assume that the End of the Encounter qualifies as all 3. It's just easier that way, and it's not likely to break anything. (Especially if your main concern was that skipping the Rally steps would cheat the PCs out of healing opportunities.) 3) Fatigue, Stress, and normal Wounds are all things that PCs can recover from very quickly. It's just the realities of the math. A character with Toughness X passes out from 2X Fatigue, but also recovers a _minimum_ of X Fatigue per encounter. When you start your next encounter most of the PCs will be starting with 0 Fatigue most of the time. The Fatigue mechanic does a good job of modeling short-term fatigue such as "You're winded for a minute because you just ran half a mile". It's not nearly as good at modeling "You're exhausted and sore because you marched 20 miles in full kit yesterday and haven't gotten any sleep." Ways to overcome or diminish Fatigue are numerous and scattered throughout the actions, talents, rally steps, etc. It's almost impossible for Fatigue to linger on a character for more than a couple turns. If you want to represent sleeplessness, starvation, long term aches and pains, or anything the players can't just brush off, you'll want to use Conditions instead of Fatigue. Overwhelmed and Sluggish are especially good for these purposes. Same thing for Stress. It's great at representing panic, surprise, or when events are happening too fast to process. It doesn't really handle long-term stress like what you feel if you lose your job, get diagnosed with a life-threatening disease, or your spouse asks for a divorce. Those are the sorts of things that don't get better a minute later when you you happen to roll 2 boons on an nature lore check. Long-term stressors are better off being represented by the Demoralised, Perplexed, or Shock Conditions than with mere Stress tokens. Wounds linger a little more than Fatigue/Stress, but not really that much. Between immediate First Aid, the automatic recovery overnight, and the Resilience check in the morning, most characters can (and often will) recover nearly their entire Wound Threshold per day. Criticals (and Severe Injuries, if you're using those cards) stick around a bit longer (at least without Blessings or Medicine to throw at them). Unless you have a good story reason to make multiple fights happen in a row with no rest breaks in between, it's probably best to assume your players will start every fight recovered from everything but their Criticals. 4) The check for turning temporary Insanity permanent is made based on the number of tokens on the Insanity Card, NOT the current level of Stress or Fatigue. So it's irrelevant whether that happens before or after Stress and Fatigue are recovered. It's based off the worst state their situation got to during that Act, not where it is at the time they are rolling.

Emirikol said: Always remember: Once per day per type of healing. That means that ONE calming touch and ONE cure wounds per day per character Does it say that in the rules? If so, on what page? I found where it says that Healing Draughts are once per day, but nothing about healing Actions. I don't actually have a Shallyan in my group, by the way. We're just passed the point in The Enemy Within where the PCs are spending the night at the Welcome Rest Inn. Next door is a leper colony run by Shallyan Nuns. The scenario notes say the nuns have First Aid and Medicine, but the overnight rest, long-term care, and healing rules are frankly kinda clunky. I'd have to make two different rolls for NPCs to determine how many bonus dice they get to add to the roll the PC then makes. Roll 3 blue, 1 white, and 2 purple. Determine variable X based on number of successes. Roll 3 blue and 2 purple. Determine variable Y based on pass/fail and number of boons. Then roll PCs Resilience + Toughness + X white + Y yellow + either 1 or 2 purple depending on whether or not the medicine roll passed. Those three extra die rolls per PC will only add about 2 wounds worth of healing total, and that just doesn't seem worth it for all that time and effort. I cannot adequately express my frustration at that clunky and time-consuming mechanic. That's when I started wondering if it weren't just gonna be easier to have the nuns invoke a blessing. Which lead (eventually) to me noticing that there were no limits on the cards for the two lowest-level healing spells, but there were anti-spam limitations on the higher-level spells. I tried to house-rule and limit healing to once per day (much like you suggest) and also get rid of the triple-layered long-term-care rules, but quickly found that was going to have ripple effects with various actions and character options. For example, my party includes a Bright Wizard, who currently has a critical wound and would love to cast Cauterize repeatedly, but is reigned in by that spell's special recharge rules (it recharges during each rally step and at the end of each encounter). They need a Comet to actually heal the critical wound via that spell, so it could take a lot of castings to get the desired effect. A success is just "ignore the critical wound's effects till the end of the Act." If I slap down a "Max once per Day" limit on Cauterize, then that's pretty much rendering that spell pointless. To be clear: I'm okay with the PCs recovering all or nearly all their wounds over night, or even between most encounters. What I'm not keen on is rolling again and again to do it. My players are new to the game still, so assembling and then interpretting a die pool takes a lot longer than desired.

Are these two spells the annoying source of trouble that I suspect they are going to be? (Context: I'm already pretty annoyed at the natural healing, long-term care, and first aid rules.) Calming Touch is a Rank 1 Shallya blessing for 4 favour that heals a wound or recovers a critical of severity 3 or less (which is most of them) for 2+ successes. Cure Wounds is a Rank 2 Shallya blessing for 6 favour that heals a bunch of wounds, and can sometimes cure a critical if you roll a large number of boons. These two spells seem kinda broken to me. The problem isn't really "the PCs start every fight with zero wounds", as I'm mostly okay with that. The problem I have with it is all the time spent rolling, rerolling, currying favour so you can roll again, etc, in an attempt to get the correct number of successes or boons to fix a character who'se been really badly hurt. Most of the healing (or crit-healing, or disease/insanity/mutation curing) spells have some sort of limitation. They don't recharge till sunrise, and/or they say something like "May only attempt this blessing once per disease", and/or they have pretty dire chaos-star lines. The high-end healing-ish spells all seem pretty well balanced and reigned in, but these low-rank ones just encourage you roll again and again until you succeed by mathematical brute force. Has this proven to be a problem in most people's campaigns? What solutions, if any, have people found for it? EDIT: Does the Shallya POD include any alternatives that might alleviate this problem? Or any that make it worse? I haven't ordered that one yet.

SPOILER ALERT: This is the campaign log for the new The Enemy Within for Warhammer 3rd Ed. These events are from our third session. For the most part they are events from the 2nd in-character day of the campaign, except for one conversation that normally wouldn't happen till at least Day 5 of the scenario as written. By the end of Day 3, my PCs had actually done parts of Day 9 as well, though I may not get to that in this post. Proceed with caution if you think you're ever going to play this campaign, as events discussed here include MAJOR SPOILERS. This could easily be a long post. I was really on-fire this session, and packed a lot in. The players were very much on their game as well, and gathered some info I'd planned to hold back till much later. We ran over our time slot by at least an hour. In fact, we hit so much in session 3 that I'm only going to cover half of this session in this post, for time and space reasons. PC List/Reminder: Burgolt the Nobleman Pistolier Hrulgar the Dwarven Runesmith Ninewise the Initiate of Ranald Lina the Bright Wizard Early Evening of Day 2: When last we saw our heroes, they had just saved the family of a merchant, Adolphus Starke, from arson (and probably attempted murder). The PCs killed one arsonist, captured the other and delivered him to the city watch, and did it all in very direct defiance of a man named Bischoff. Bischoff is the main enforcer for The Black Cowl. The Cowl's organization (using the Criminal Empire nemesis card) was dealt it's first set-backs by these developments. The PCs spent a little time talking with Starke. His boat was almost entirely ruined by the fire (the fire got to the 8th space of a 9-space progress tracker that would have ended in 3 deaths and a sinking) and will need major repairs before it can leave town. The whole point of him being here was that he's awaiting a delivery of exotic Cathayan silks to arrive, a shipment that is now overdue. He's in very dire straits, and deeply ashamed at his own responsibility for what has happened. A few days ago, upon arriving in Averheim, he was approached on the docks by a gang of racketeers and thugs. They demanded protection money, by Starke refused. Not on principle, nor even because of any amount of personal courage. He refusal was simply because he had a previously standing arrangement with another racketeer. A man named Klaus Keller had been accepting Starke's protection moneys for years, and Starke had credit to spare. "Go talk to Keller," he told them. Klaus Keller was, of course, the very same racketeer whose body the PCs had found in an alleyway the previous day. Bad news for the merchant. Our heroes are heroes indeed, though, and they weren't about to leave Starke and his family vulnerable on the docks where Bischoff and crew might do them in. Burgolt offered that they could use one of the guest rooms in one of his family's smaller properties for a few nights. This was a very generous offer from a nobleman of Burgolt's standing, and Starke took him up on it at once. The party heads to Burgolt's house, has some dinner and debates their next options. The rain that started earlier in the day (while they were trudging about the riverbanks looking for Jurgen's hat) continues and gets quite nasty, so they decide to stay the night in the property. There's not actually enough beds since Starke's family is there as well. The dwarf is short enough to sleep on the fainting couch in the foyer, so they make do. Off-Camera Sidebar: The decision to stay at Burgolt's to avoid the worst of the rain causes the players to miss on several events, but none of them were vital for PCs to attend, and most could be learned later from witnesses (or bodies). Those who have read the adventure will know most of them, but I had also prepared a few special events as reactions to the confrontation with Bischoff. Chromatahaus, the multi-Order dorm where Lina usually bunks, is surveilled by two of Bischoff's thugs. More on that below, and again in Session 4. Meanwhile, Bischoff and Gerd Knakk (the docker foreman that Ninewise accidentally caused to join the Cowl's group) organize a mob of Fish to go to the guard house and demand the release of the "wrongly accused" arsonist. More on that in a future post, as well. Morning of Day 3 Breakfast is quite nice. Burgolt's servants whip up something special… but after the meal, the cook and butler take him aside. They let the young nobleman know that with all these extra houseguests, the pantry is all but depleted. Burgolt dips into his piggy bank and forks over several coins to restock the larder. The PCs have a variety of tasks they wish to accomplish this morning, so they scatter a bit. Burgolt goes to his father's house to collect his daily allowance (he gets a stipend of 3 silver per day from his father's money-keeper). Ninewyse goes shopping for a detailed map of Averheim, as her previous map had spent rather a lot of time in the river yesterday. Lina kills time in some way that completely escapes me now, but does not involve going to the dorm at all. Hrulgar heads to a meeting at the Averburg Palace. He'd sent word at some point the previous day (a message carried by a soldier from the arson arrest, if I'm not mistaken) requesting an audience with his old war-buddy Marcus Baerfaust. Since the poor dwarf had to sit around waiting for other people the previous session, I was all too happy to give him some spotlight time. Baerfaust and Hrulgar Sidebar: Marcus Baerfaust is the Captain of the Averheim Garrison. He is of low birth, but was granted a very minor title (Edler) for his command of the troops at the Third Battle of Blackfire Pass. His immediate superior (the Elector, Marius "The Mad Count" von Leitdorf) died in the battle, and Baerfaust managed to keep the lines from collapsing when it happened. Hrulgar was also present at that battle. The dwarf was actually part of the impromptu militia unit that was emergency deployed to the center of the fighting in an attempt to reinforced the Mad Count's overwhelmed guard. Hrulgar took a bad head-wound in that fight, and passed out from it. He remembers awakening in the Shallyan hospice, his wounds being tended by a charitable noblewoman (Gravin Clothilde von Alptraum). Those details are all content generated by the player's responses to the "Battle-Scarred" background card for The Enemy Within. As part of character generation, the player is given the opportunity to color Baerfaust as hero, coward, traitor, etc. Our player decided that (from his perspective, at least) Baerfaust was a hero and capable commander who did what he could to save the Count, but was unable to do so because of the harrowing realities of battle. He also indicated they were friends and comrades, which was a particularly potent decision. These questions and answers are also where Ingo Baerfaust (see my previous posts, and below) came from. Captain Marcus Baerfaust is very busy and somewhat stressed, but he's able to find a little time this morning for his old friend. When Hrulgar arrives, Baerfaust sets aside his paperwork and pours them a few drinks. The Dwarf fills in the Captain about the arson on the docks, and the new crime boss. Baerfaust listens intently, but says that his hands are largely tied. His authority as commander of the garrison comes directly from the Elector of Averland, but in the two years since Marius von Leitdorf died in battle, that position has lain vacant. Money is tight, and the squabbling nobles and burghers rarely back his plays. What if this new crime boss turns out to work for some nobleman, who demands his servant be set free? Baerfaust's political situation is precarious. Criminal Background Sidebar: One of the PCs, Ninewise the Initiate of Ranald, was created with the Criminal Background card. Her answers to the questions on that card made it clear that she was arrested by Captain Baerfaust himself within the past few years. The Captain was forced to acquit and release her due to sworn testimony of a businessman named Friederich Grosz who honestly believed Ninewise to be innocent of the crime (though in truth she wasn't). Ninewise is a bit of a local hero amongst the underclass because of it, as acquittals by any means short of trial by combat are extremely rare in the Empire. Being unable to successfully prosecute a criminal of relatively low stature definitely undermined his position within the city. That said criminal is, perhaps unknown to him, a friend of a friend, just makes it more complicated. Talk turns to Ingo, who is Captain Baerfaust's nephew, gone missing these past two weeks. Hrulgar was friends with Ingo, and noticed his absence almost immediately because they'd had plans for dinner or some such the day after he was last seen. He'd checked with a few other war buddies since then, and no one knew where Ingo had gone. The Captain doesn't know either, but suspects foul play. Ingo Baerfaust had been aware of the rumblings about the changes in the criminal landscape of the wharf district. He was doing some "unofficial" investigating around the docks, and had promised to report his findings back to his uncle. On the night he was last seen, he'd left a note for Marcus in the Captain's office. Unfortunately, Ingo's handwriting was notoriously bad, he'd barely learned his letters within the past few years. The note was almost entirely illegible, except for one word that seemed to be written with great deliberation. "Jade". It meant nothing to the Captain. He planned to harangue his nephew about it the next day, but had not seen him since. Hrulgar asks if the note is available for him to look at. Alas as parchment is expensive, and Marcus thought for certain he would see his nephew again soon, the letter was thrown in the palimpsest bin. Palimpsest Sidebar: Palimpsest is the common middle-ages practice of bleaching (more like washing with a milk-and-oat mixture and/or scraping with pumice) the ink off of a parchment so that it can be used again. The document had no doubt already been recycled before its was ever known that it might well contain Ingo's last words. At that moment, there is a rap at the door and a female Lieutenant in full-plate enters. "The powder count, sir," she says, handing a document to the Captain. Baerfaust frowns at whatever it says, but doesn't go into the details. It's called foreshadowing. The woman is introduced as Arta Schaeffer, and she is the Captain's right hand this past year or more. Marcus introduces Hrulgar, and when he does so, Arta's eyes light up. "You're Skullsplitter!? THE Skullsplitter?" she asks. "It's a pleasure to finally meet you! The Captain has told me all about you, and you were truly a sight to behold at Blackfire…" Hrulgar corrects her, his last name is Steelheart, not Skullsplitter, but she won't hear it. There's discussion for a bit about how Hrulgar's performance at Third Blackfire was so impressive. Hrulgar has barely any memory of it, and modestly replies that "Skullsplit" would be more accurate given that he got near as well as he gave. Marcus Baerfaust intervenes now to reign in Arta's fanboyish enthusiasm. When Skullsplitter - I mean Steelheart - was convalescing after the battle, he was clearly embarrassed whenever the troops called him by that name, so Baerfaust had ordered them not to do so. Arta's just really pleased to meet him. The scene gets intentionally awkward (the GM is up to something), and Baerfaust stops Arta short. Pulling rank and being quite curt with her, the Captain insists Lt Schaeffer has more important duties than to attempt to seduce her commanding officer's friends. (Yep, the GM is definitely up to no good here. I wonder what it means.) And with that, the blushing Dwarf decides it's time to go. He promises to report back to Baerfaust anything important he learns about Ingo or the Black Cowl. Wow, I really packed a lot into this session. This was just the tip of the iceberg, no more than the first hour. There's still another 3 or 4 really good scenes left to describe, including the my favorite of the campaign so far, but I've run out of writing time today. I'll have to finish this session report in another post later this week.

Page 15 of the Tome of Mysteries has a few pertinent answers to this. Worth the minute it will take to read. Elsewhere, magic is described as "winds" so I would have it twist, flow, and move. Each order has it's own color, and associated properties, which I would draw in to the description. Bright Order magic flickering like flames. Jade Order magic taking organic shapes, then drifting like discarded leaves falling ever slowly to earth. Amber magic skittering about like a busy little chipmunk, then suddenly standing stalk-still when it realizes it's being watched. Amethyst magic forming little skulls or ghostly hooded figures, then slinking off to hide in the shadows. Each order has it's own glyph or sigil, too. Some are basically arrows, so they may blow in a particular direction ceaselessly. Others are represented by concentric circles, so they may orbit or linger more. Again, the Tome of Magic is a great place to start. Chapter 3: The Eight Orders begins on page 17. For the chaos gods, their magic would seem tainted, but maybe not obviously so. One cool way to do it would be to always start describing it as the nearest "proper" form of magic, and then describe how it's been twisted and distorted almost as an after-thought. Or, if you prefer, more over-the-top. Nurgle magic vomits and oozes, or flits about like ghostly flies. Slaneshi magic keeps making eyes at you, and has some hypnotic rhythm to the patterns of its movements. The magic of Tzeentch the great deciever constantly reimagines itself, cycling through colors and forms in a ways that other magic cannot. Magic done by Beastmen seems feral and adversarial, even long after it's casting. Magic of the Skaven hisses and runs away when directly observed. Ork magic bumbles and cavorts in an unpredictable fashion. I'm just making this up. One thing I would bear in mind is that magic doesn't really create magical energy, so much as it gives form to and strengthens the magical energy that is already there. On the typical city street of the empire, there will be little wisps of half a dozen different winds blowing at any time. The dead rat in the gutter has beads of Amber on its fur, but as time passes they fade and an Amethyst mist gathers about it. The watchman passing by carries an old lantern hanging disused from his pack. It's not lit at the moment, but has been a thousand times before so with Witchsight you can still see it glow or smoke ever so slightly. His coin purse has only ever held brass or silver coins, but when viewed with Magical Sight it may seem faintly embroidered in gold or yellow. Magic blows, drips, and oozes throughout the Old World. Wizards don't walk around with Magical Sight turned on at every single moment of the day, and at least part of the reason is because it would be terribly distracting to do so. I think. Like I said, I'm mostly making this up. Edited just for formatting, which had been lost when the forums were converted to new software.

Valvorik raises an excellent point. Motivations for helping Curd Weiss should be growing organically out of the Background cards the characters start with. Here's some specific examples: The Academic has ties to the Sun Society, which meets at the Journey's End, which is owned by Kaufman and managed by Curd. Kaufman is also one of the financial backers of the organization. Doing a favour for Curd and von Kaufman is a way for the Academic to earn some good will for or from the Sun Society. Offer a break on Sun Society dues, or simply have the other members of the society (Luminary Mauer or Unterlector Glottz) ask the PCs to do it. The Foreign Messenger card includes either a link to von Kaufman or von Alptraum. If the former, it should be very easy to hook that player in. If the later, simply reverse the order of the Day 3 and Day 6 missions. Have Clothilde von Alptraum contact them, asking for their help in her carriage ride. "Your master wants my reply on an important subject, but I'm too distracted by all this banditry nonsense to really focus on that. Perhaps I'd be able to give you a clearer answer if someone could just solve my bandit problems first?" The Gently-Born card includes a very tangential link to the Journey's End. It's not nearly as solid a connection as the Academic or Foreign Messenger have, but it's a possible starting point if the other backgrounds didn't get chosen. They clearly have spent some time at the Inn, possibly as a preferred customer. Any PC of Gold or Silver tier might hear about the Party and the Expedition Artifacts available for viewing on Day 8. If you drop wind of that in advance, the presence of mysterious artifacts may well trigger their plot-sensors. The PCs may ask you "how do we get invites?" Graf von Kaufman (and by extension Curd Wiess) is the easy answer there. So, favours owed, and if that doesn't do it you've can offer money, power, social connections, a hint at the larger scope of the criminal empire, and even a possible mention of the gunpowder if the first few things won't work. There's many ways to motivate the characters. And then there's the "Won't take No for an answer" option. Graf von Kaufman may well be within his legal/noble rights to simply task the PCs with the responsibility whether they want it or not. I'd be reluctant to do so as it may annoy the players (and might not make sense depending on who wears the Black Cowl in your version), but such bossiness from a Graf would very much be in keeping with the themes and laws of the Empire. Flavour to taste. As a final option if all else fails, you can always just tell the players, out of character: "Guys, I know you're focused on the docks, but trust me the plot leads to the bandit troubles. It will all connect together before the final reel. If you come up with your own reasons for your character to want to do Weiss a favour, when it's all said and done you'll be glad you did it. I even promise not to have anything interesting happen in town while you're gone." I know it's a bit of a strong-arm, but could work as a last ditch Plan B to fall back on if the players are absolutely stubborn or missing the in-character hint.

Karma Kollapse said: 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. … 3 is where the players will eventually get properly involved in the plot (sort of), but the whole thread comes from out of nowhere. There are definitely opportunities for the PCs to interfere with 1 & 2 on your list. Saving Starke's family from the fire would be a big one. They don't have to just be passive events happening in the background for color. If you have access to the Criminal Empire conspiracy card (I don't remember which boxed set it came from), I would use Valvorik's excellent idea of having the campaign start with the Agenda tracker on that card already being a little more than half way completed. Every time something bad happens that consolidates the Black Cowl's power, make a point of adjusting that tracker closer to completion. If the players save one of his victims or disrupt his plans in some way, either reduce the Criminal Empire's Stability rating or set their Agenda back a space. This lets you give the PCs something to do, and lets them see whether or not they're making progress. If the Agenda tracker starts getting really close to done, it may motivate the players to strike out against the Black Cowl's operation. Dominating the local underworld is just a means to an ends for the Cowl. He needs money, and he needs something to provide a little cover for the Skaven plot. So the PCs can totally destroy his criminal enforcers and empire without it crippling the plot. If you do get to the end of the Agenda track before chapter 2 starts, you'll want to come up with some consequence (ie: a benefit for the bad guys) to make it sting a little. If they do enough damage to the Stability, there are mechanical penalties that get applied to the badguys. Given that much of what the Black Cowl is arranging happens off-camera and out-of-town, you can let them trash his local resources without it ruining the big picture. If you don't have the Criminal Empire card, just improvise your own tracker with events and benefits on it. It will also help a lot if you give the PCs some badguys to act against. In Valvorik's excellent write-up, he introduces Bischoff, the Black Cowl's enforcer. In my campaign, In my campaign, I have two NPCs (his Bischoff + an NPC my players added in their backstory) doing his dirty work. (One as the obvious face of the Criminal Empire, the other doing more behind-the-scenes work that the Skaven can't or won't.) This helps make the Cowl's advances more personal, and also gives the PCs somewhere to start when they want to strike out against him. Make sure this Luitenant to the Cowl has only limited knowledge of the overall plot, so the PCs can't just torture him to derail everything. You want them to be able to make short-term gains (stop, arrest, or kill a minor badguy, destabilize the criminal network, etc), but not put the breaks on the whole plot. As for #3… For starters, unless your whole group chose Affluent, money should be a motivator. The chapter in the rulebook about money and equipment mentions that even the cheapest PC needs to spend 3 to 5 brass coins per day for food and board. Characters of the Gold and Silver Tiers should be going through the cash at a faster rate than that. Charge them some coins, and they'll do the mental math to realize they need to get a job sooner or later. Even without the money, Curd has plenty to offer the PCs. Access to the higher levels of society, invites to the good parties, social acceptability in general. When he makes his offer to the PCs, don't just dwell on the "5 silver for tomorrow" aspect, come right out and tell them that if it goes well he'll have other jobs for them later. Drop the names von Kaufman and von Alptraum. If that doesn't work, go ahead and have Curd mention the missing gunpowder. Even if the players are just combat-monkeys or totally caught up in the underworld plot, they should be interested in keeping large amounts of gunpowder out of the bad guy's hands. If you're players aren't interested in chasing after money, OR power, OR the obvious dangling plothook about bandits and missing gunpowder… then maybe it's time to have a serious chat with them about what kind of game they want to have and what actually motivates their characters. Lastly, it's okay for Mauer and Kaufman to be at cross-purposes and giving contradictory directions, since there's a 2/3 chance that one of them is actually the villain. If you're players are kinda slow on the uptake, ham it up so they can't help but notice the difference in position.

Emirikol said: I'm wondering if the double effect on the green side is suppose dot be there or if there should be one more eagle on the second line. The red sise simply has a double listing and shouldn't that be something else? I see no reason why those shouldn't be exactly as written. It's not the only action to have multiple lines featuring the same number of boons. Perhaps you house-ruled the boon rules long ago and have forgotten that it works the way it does in the rulebook? The relevant rules are on page 45 of the core rulebook. Per the rules-as-written, you spend the boons you rolled to trigger effects. (Boons work differently than successes in this way.) Each boon line can be used a maximum of once. So if two identical boon lines appear on the action, that means you can use that effect twice if you have twice as many boons. On the green side of this card: if you rolled 2 or 3 boons, you'd get to choose between "target suffers 1 stress", "add 1 recharge" and "recover 1 stress" (the default 2 boon affect that's always available for a mental check). If you rolled 4 or 5 boons, you'd get to pick 2 of those effects, and if you rolled 6 or more you'd get to activate all 3. On the red side of the card, if you rolled 1 boon you'd move that target's stance 1 more reckless. If you rolled 2 boons you'd choose between moving their stance 2 reckless total, or recovering 1 stress (the default 2-boon option again). If you rolled 3 boons you'd either move their stance up to 2 reckless, _or_ only move it 1 reckless but also recover 1 stress. With 4 or more boons you'd choose both effects, adjusting their stance twice and recovering a stress as well. Hope that clears up the misunderstanding. If it's still confusing, I would reccomend rereading page 45 of the core rulebook.

Emirikol said: There's something wierd with this card. I'm sorry, I'm not following you / not seeing it. What do you think is weird about the card?

abidibladiduda said: r_b_bergstrom said: abidibladiduda said: It seems to me that you almost try to avoid telling your players what you want your game to be. I don't think that is a fair characterization at all. It is not a characterization because I don't know you. It is just what i thought while reading your comments. If you felt like it was I apologize. Honestly, I _was_ little miffed by it. I've got a thin skin, but I also recover quickly. Apology accepted. It's pretty obvious to me now that you didn't mean any offense, and I certainly didn't intend any offense to you. We're cool. Thank you for the efforts and opinions, by the way. The advice you gave me was solid.

valvorik said: For travel, a noble might be given a writ to show a banker or merchant house that would advance them their allowance when travelling etc., at least if they can make it to a major city. That's really good. I might just have to do that instead of my original plan. valvorik said: X marks the spot - odd Ranald blessing as I think i've said in another thread, already "magically vanished" from my player stacks of cards even before being a cleric of Ranald has ever come up. For the hat, I would have them find it in the mudflats rather than "in lair" etc. Point them at river as they should be pointed (of course others just say he fell in or was tossed after being mugged or something). Yeah, I nearly pulled it from the binders I keep the cards in after your warning about it a few weeks back… but before I got around to it, my player emailed me and said she was planning on buying it. I don't like saying "no" to the players if there's any variety of "yes, but…" answer that sounds fun and not game-breaking. I've looked through the campaign, and most of the things the players will be likely to want to find with that are going to be difficult to justify using it. There'll be times where it will be immensely helpful, but just as many items that it can't find. Some are too generic to use it on without personally having seen them (thinking of the barrels here). Seeing a weapon briefly in a 2-round fight, or examining the wounds it left, isn't the same as having a "clear description or image" of it, either. Some of the likely targets are cursed. Establishing a supernatural connection with cursed items sounds to me like a real good way to earn Corruption tokens, even if it is a "divine" scrying method. (As they say, if you stare too long into the abyss…) A certain NPC's bonus dice against being detected or tracked could arguably apply to the blessing's roll. Knowing where (or who) something is, is not automatically the same as being able to do anything about it. As you'll see when I get around to writing up sessions 3 & 4, they did eventually figure out how to find the "lair" way ahead of schedule because of that card, but I think it actually enhanced the story and in no way undermined it.

Sounds like this tournament could use a villain. I am Frieherr-Heir Ditmar Karlheinz von Tiegelkamp of the wealthy Altdorf von Tiegelkamps. I have a reputation as an almost-feral wild-child of the aristocracy. I was esquired into the Reiksguard at an early age just to keep me out of trouble, but it didn't work. Frankly, my father was worried I might one day kill him for my inheritance, so he did his best to send me off to war. I came back. My armour has been enameled the deepest crimson. This contrasts starkly with the gleaming steel of my pauldrons, the shoulder cops of which are fashioned in the shape of crowned skulls. In many places the enamel has been chipped away by the blows of men and beast that failed to kill me. A curtain of blood-stained velvet hangs over the dexter side of my shield to deny me the Imperial initials that remain emblazoned on my coat of arms. My brutal and ignoble behavior on the battlefield has assured that, though I am still bound to do the Emperor's dirty work, I will forever be kept beyond arms length. I am exactly the sort of man the Empire needs more of, if I do say so myself. My entry into this tournament is to assure the Golden Garter does not leave the bounds of our Empire. No Brettonian dog shall paw at the undergarments of our realm. Towards that end, at this morning's festivities, I had my squire slip into the armorers tent and sabotage the lances that had been set aside for the foreigner's use. Should he and I advance to the second bracket of the tournament, I'll do far worse. My first opponent is Reinwald Hildebrand von Oligschläger. His lineage and description is insignificant. He is merely a bump on the road to me facing down the foreign dog I came here to ruin or kill. For the Emperor! 1st Pass: I spur my horse to charging speed and aim square for the center of von Oligschläger's shield, confident I'll unhorse him. We hit hard, both of us breaking the tips of our lances and shuddering in our saddles. (2 successes) There's a tearing sound that worries me, so when i get to the end of the lists I inspect my shield. (1 bane) The sash of shame has been torn diagonally, but it still covers the Imperial sigil so I don't need to replace it before the second pass. Score: von Tiegelkamp 1, von Oligschläger 1 2nd Pass: We charge again. Both our lances connect solidly and the impact is jarring. (1 success) I am the better horseman, though, and I remain in my saddle. Through the slits in my visor, I can see the blurring form of von Oligschläger as he is dramatically dislodged from his horse. (2 boons on my roll. Opponent fails his ride check.) I race to the end of the lists. As I do so, I briefly play with the idea of heading back down the lane and galloping over the stunned body of my opponent. No, that is a disgrace better saved for tomorrow and the Brettonian. The crowd is cheering. I wheel my horse about to salute them, only to realize it's not me they are applauding. Von Oligschläger is on his feet already! He must be very nimble, sturdy, or both. (2 boons on his ride check, so though dislodged, he recovered quickly.) Score: von Tiegelkamp 3, von Oligschläger 2 I have the advantage in points. A simple win should be easy if I were to play it safe and smart. Too easy. The crowd seems to like him. That will not do. I'm going to break this man. 3rd Pass: This time, I aim high, to strike von Oligschläger in the throat. It's a risky move, hard to connect, but devastating if it does. I don't care if he hits me back, as only 1 of us will be walking away from this if I have anything to say about it. (Here I would be rolling a Reckless die if the rules of the tournament allowed it.) As my weapon races towards him, that coward von Oligschläger raises his shield high to protect his head. My lance connects to the shield and the tip breaks off with a loud crack. He stays upright, but his desperate defense threw off his own aim. He missed me and my shield entirely. (3 successes) There was, however, a familiar ripping sound. He missed the shield itself, but not the sash of shame. I wheel my horse about, nearly crashing into the seats. The cloth was thrown high, and now lazily drifts toward the earth. I reach out to catch it in the air, as that will show them all that I am the master of this bloody sport. They will cheer for no one but me after this. Just out of reach… leaning out further… my horse continues to turn… over-extended… I am face down in the dirt. (3 banes to go with those 3 successes. My resulting ride check is a failure.) The crowd is a mix. Laughter, cheers, swoons, and boos. From my position on the ground it's hard to determine the proportions or quality of the noise. My horse rears some more before galloping away. My squire rushes to my side, but insist on regaining my footing without him. I flip up my visor and glare at that still mounted but unarmed von Oligschläger bastard. He extends his arms in the air, and the crowd cheers again. The smug git thinks he's won. My hand inches towards the hilt of my sword. But now I am surrounded by the Masters of the Lists and the Master of the Revels, as well as a half dozen squires, stable hands and armory boys. Someone lifts my opponents lance from the dirt. It's tip is unbroken, a clear sign of a miss, though they do reward him as if he were responsible for my faceplant. By points I have won, so the Master of the Lists clasps my gauntlet and raises my hand. Score: von Tiegelkamp 4, von Oligschläger 3 It is a hollow victory, as the crowd clearly favors the other man and my enamel is caked with dirt and manure. Epilogue: I storm off, my squire at my heels. He is carrying the torn fabric of my Sash of Shame. As I take it from his hands I order him about, "Boy, fetch the fine bottle of Brettonian Blanc from our tent, and offer it as a sign of my respects to von Oligschläger… so he knows there's no hard feelings." My simpleton squire asks for clarification. "The one you had me piss in, sir? I thought I was supposed to put that in the foreigner's tent tonight." It is so hard to get good help these days.

valvorik said: Re the Career cards and gear, it's been clarified a couple of times that the gear listed on back of career cards is "expected gear" useful to GM, guideline to PC, but not "part of starting kit". That said, yup I had a starting Pistolier noble who realized having a warhorse and pistol was a tall order at time of character creation! Here too some backstory helped (recently resigned Pistolier in small scandal). I like the "pawned that stuff" connection to the Gently Born backgroud. Thank you. I know the equipment is just a guideline, but my player felt very motivated to buy both a horse and a pistol. I think most players would, seeing as their career special ability is to ignore penalties for ranged attacks made from horseback. If you don't have both a horse and a ranged weapon of some sort, you're missing out. Sure, you could substitute a cheaper ranged weapon, but it's called Pistolier, not Crossbowier. Character in question went with an average _riding_ horse and a poor-quality pistol. I make weapon cards for the PC's equipment, and the one for the pistol is clearly marked "Back-Up Pistol" to remind the player that a better weapon is waiting at Mathilda Durbein's pawn-shop, should the character come into money. Emirikol said: Regarding pistoliers, Poor Quality is all they can afford at creation generally, but being a noble, they get a free 1gc every month (Lure of Power). Free money! As mentioned in the first post, I'm having Burgolt's father dole out the money 3 silver per day instead of 1 gold per month. It's basically the same amount, but has several advantages. Keeps the player from feeling too rich early on, and thus ignoring the various "we'll pay you 30 silver to do X" threads in the published adventure. He's on a financial leash, and can feel (and resent) it. Establishes the character of the Baron (Burgolt's father) as being controlling and miserly. Which means that when he does something nice, it makes the players automatically suspicious. When he offered them fancy Brandy, Burgolt called it a bribe whilst everyone else assumed the booze must be drugged or cursed. It was appropriately disfunctional. Since the Baron doesn't exist in the published materials, I have minor concerns that he might get sidelined by the many interlinked clue-threads that lead to established NPCs. Forcing the player to visit the family manor once a day for his allowance means there's a recurring opportunity for me to reintroduce the Baron to the plotline. This daily allowance approach will of course get tricky in Chapter Two of the Campaign, but I have already worked out a linkage from The Baron to one of the organizations introduced in Chapter Two. I'm also toying with the idea of sending father's money-keeper along to supervise on the larger excursion. I think it'd be very humorous to saddle the PCs with an obvious spy/deadweight NPC "servant" carrying a chest full of coins they can't have yet. I'm confident they'll take very good care of him.

Spoiler Alert: Campaign log for Session 2 / Day 2 of the new The Enemy Within for Warhammer. Major spoilers for anyone who hasn't played to at least Day 3 of the adventure yet. PC List/Reminder: Ninewise the Initiate of Ranald Lina the Bright Wizard Burgolt the Nobleman Pistolier Hrulgar the Dwarven Runesmith Between sessions, the player of Ninewise told me she was planning to spend her first XP on "X marks the spot", a Ranald blessing that allows you to track or find an item. This obviously has some issues for a mystery campaign, especially if the GM isn't prepared for it. I'd been warned about that particular blessing by other GMs at the Warhammer forums. A sidebar about good players: I consider myself quite lucky to have players considerate enough to give the GM a heads-up when they're planning to do something very unexpected. It takes a certain amount of trust and faith to do that (as a bad GM could potentially be a jerk and ruin your plans), but it makes for a much better narrative and game than if the GM suddenly has to pause mid-session to figure out where the heck this crazy new action is going to take the story. My players are awesome. Her plan was either a) find Jurgen Klinski's hat, or b) use the body of Klaus Keller to find the the weapon that killed him. I had most of a week to read and reread the card, think about what it did and how it logically should or shouldn't work, and then prep some scenes based on what it will reveal. I came to the conclusion that the spell will only be a problem if Ninewise gets a good look at the Black Cowl's trademark headgear. All the other possible targets for the spell that I could imagine are either things I'm pretty much okay with the players being able to head straight towards, or things she'd really regret establishing a psychic link to. Klaus who? Klaus Keller is the ring-wearing racketeer whose body the PCs discovered in the first session. I didn't mention his name in my previous post, as it wasn't relevant. I also didn't mention his very suspicious and alarming wounds in that post, but I definitely mentioned them to players. Lina the Bright Wizard made a Magic Sight roll and so knew the wounds weren't merely poisoned, but somehow magically polluted or corrupted. Keller's body had been taken to the Garden of Morr already, and the players planned to sneak in after dark and exhume him to reverse-engineer a description of the murder weapon. I was a bit doubtful on whether or not that would work, given the career cards for the game don't actually include a Forensic Pathologist card. Jurgen's hat sure seemed like the better lead, but just in case they were really dedicated to this course of action I dug up some appropriate location and monster cards. I was totally prepared for our first fight scene being against some minor undead feasting on shallow graves, but in the end it didn't happen. The second session started with PCs still in the Upright Pig tavern. Lina the Bright Wizard was waiting at a table adjacent to the one where Bischoff was gambling, as he'd said he had a job for her the next day. Anyone who's read or played the adventure can imagine why a Bright Wizard might be of use to the Black Cowl's enforcer on Day 2 of the campaign… but let's be honest. It seemed really unlikely that the PCs were going to commit arson and murder on behalf of the villain's lieutenant, even if it might give them an inside track on the investigation. So instead, I planned for Bischoff to offer her a couple silver schillings to just not be in the Wharf District tomorrow after noon. A bright wizard might be able to put out fires as well as start them, after all. He had just met her, so it's not like he's going to take her into his confidence immediately. His bribe would be giving the PCs a heads-up that something bad and fire-related would be happening at the docks on Day 2, but they'd have to either stay away, or openly declare war on the new crime boss who had till this point been unaware they even existed. I was all too happy to provide them with that dilemma. The moment the session started though, the PCs all bailed out of the bar as fast as they could. Guess they didn't like the idea of dining in a tavern now (thanks to Ninewise's reckless actions at the end of the previous session) filled with dozens of Cowl-aligned thugs. Can't blame them. So I figured they'd be off to the graveyard. Nope, not that either. Instead they went to Burgolt's family home to spy on the late-night comings and goings. See if the Black Cowl returned. After a bit of a stake out, they deduced that the Baron (Burgolt's father) was entertaining an amorous lady-friend. At that, they decided that discretion is the better part of being a peeping tom, and scattered each to their homes. End of Day 1. Balcony Sidebar: At some point it was revealed that there were lingering traces of dark magic on and near the balcony where Burgolt saw the Black Cowl ascend the previous night. Lina used Magic Sight to note them. I neglected to put it in my notes, so now I'm not sure if it happened in session 1 when they stopped in to pick up Burgolt's allowance and were treated to Brandy, or if it was in session 2 while staking the place out. I know this was revealed though, because I remember the players cracking some jokes about how terribly frightening the dark magic must have been. "He used his terribly terribly evil levitation spell". That prompted a short discussion of the setting and the Winds of Magic. Yep, there really is an evil version of levitation. I also went on record as saying the wounds on Klaus Keller's body are NOT the same "flavor" of evil magic as seen on the balcony. Very different winds, but just as forbidden. Thinking about it though from my current perspective of just past session 4, I think I might want to retouch those subjects and restress those points to the players. What killed the racketeer etc is definitely NOT the same sort of magic as levitated the cowled figure up to the balcony. Mystery scenarios, especially complicated ones, can go wrong in many ways. The PCs might randomly jump to the correct answer way ahead of schedule, but just as easily the players might miss your clues entirely and stall out. In this case, I'm worried that despite finding the clues but could jump to the wrong conclusions. A red herring now and again may sometimes be useful if the players are getting ahead of themselves, but herring always needs to be handled with care and respect befitting the toxic weapon they are. When you have more than one mystery going on, you have to be extra careful to compartmentalize your clues so that the players can understand what is or is not connected. Day 2 starts with the players meeting up for breakfast briefly before splitting the party. Hrulgar has plans to open up a shop for importing fine Dwarven wares and weaponry from the mountains. This makes perfect sense in-character, and yet it somehow blind-sided me. The player has indicated he's a Runesmith only till I can disgrace him into becoming a Troll-Slayer, so I didn't expect him to go hunting for a lease on a storefront instead of hunting for clues. It's mundane enough, and completely in character, so the player didn't think to give me any advance notice. That's fine, though it did mean I had nothing prepped for him. Left to improvise, I asked for a Tradecraft roll, which he bombed, and then things stalled a bit. I did manage to reinforce the plot by having one of the potential landlords indicate that they weren't ready to sign a lease until Klaus Keller's replacement came around to set their new protection rates. This was the first scene to fall flat, and my least favorite of the campaign so far. To make it worse, the other players went off in search of the body of Jurgen Klinski. This took a lot of time. Jurgen was a dockside regular, so I was okay with Ninewise being familiar enough with his distinctive red felt hat to use "X marks the spot" at it. She got a map of the city, said a prayer to Ranald, and flipped her lucky coin into the air. The coin landed on the edge of the map, and made a mysterious damp spot on the line representing the river bank just down river from the Wharfs. They bought a boat hook for a few shillings in case they needed to poke around in the muddy water, and headed downstream. "And, because this is Warhammer, it starts to rain," I said with a smile. Ranald led her straight to the hat… but no body. The hat was out in the muck, tangled in some roots at the surface of the muddy water. Could have easily washed down here from any part of the riverfront. They fetched it out with the hook, washed it off a bit, and examined it. There was a cut on the side, perhaps caused by a blow to the back of the head. The fibers an inch on either side of the cut seemed more deteriorated then you'd expect for simply being in the water for a week. This reminded them of the weird magical deterioration of the wounds on the body of Klaus Keller. One Magical Sight roll later they know that probably the same weapon killed both Klaus and Jurgen, but still no clue to motive. They pay some fishermen to go dredge and poke the water around where Jurgen's hat was found. Back to town. They stop in at the White Horse again, seeking info from Ute Herz the busker / information broker. As with the day before, she's very friendly and eager to help, but doesn't know of any connections between these two men. Jurgen's a nice guy, keeps his nose clean. Klaus was a hardened criminal. While Ninewise chats with Ute, Burgolt eyes the local merchants and burghers sitting at the inn. There's an out-of-town merchant at one table, but he wants to connect with locals. Burgolt would like to rally the community leaders against this fiendish Black Cowl fellow. The only locals of any prominence are a couple of old Tanners. They explain how their shops got flooded by the damaged retaining wall and sluice gate, and when they threatened to sue the city they were given a very nice compensation. The tanneries will get fixed eventually, but for now they're content to celebrate their good fortune. Not exactly what the player was after. As they talk, a breathless, panicked man bursts into the tavern. "Adolphus Starke! Your boat is on fire!" Everyone rushes outside, with the previously-anonymous out-of-town merchant crying out "My wife and children are on my boat!" Initiative check. There's 3 PCs on the scene. The Bright Wizard nails an Observation check and spots the fleeing arsonists. The Pistolier, jumps on his horse and gives chase. The Initiate of Ranald heads down the pier to the burning barge to try to put out the fire. Two Ride checks, an Intimidate Check, and a 16-damage Bright Order Spell later, and the lone surviving arsonist is standing with his hands in the air. The roll that got him to stop moving also scored a Chaos Star, so I narrate that Bischoff walks out of the Upright Pig at just that moment. The arsonist looks at him, and is clearly at least as afraid of Bischoff as he is of the Pistolier and Wizard that just killed his accomplice. I'm more than half-expecting the PCs to start shooting at Bischoff now, so I let the Dwarf just happen to return to this part of town from his failed lease-hunt so he doesn't have to miss out on any more action. Despite their reinforcements, the players don't take the first shot. There's a long tense stand-off. Bischoff offers an obviously false alibi for the arsonist, and suggests that the PCs have already killed the only true criminal here. The PCs say that the flask on the arsonist's belt must be full of the accelerant used to ignite the barge in the rain. Bischoff says it's just a flask of booze, and orders his man to drink it. Evidence destroyed right in front of the players, though much of it is thrown back up moments later. The PCs say their perp needs to go to jail. Bischoff tells the arsonist his family will be taken care of. I consider having him offer a bribe to the PCs, but Lina had walked out on his money the night before. I figured he'd have to know his odds of bribing her, plus a nobleman and a dwarf with whatever he had in his pockets was unlikely. He's the Cowl's enforcer, not his paymaster. In the background, the barge burns ferociously. Ninewise has been trying to put the fire out, but manages to roll Chaos Stars in three back-to-back unfortunate rolls, so she and the other members of the bucket brigade blunder into each other and end up in the water. Repeatedly. Clearly, she needs help. The tracker gets to space 8, and if it moves to space 9 the boat and Starke's family will all be destroyed. The Bright Wizard and the Pistolier rush off to magically suppress the fire and better-organize the bucket brigade, respectively. Given how far they'd chased the criminals, this took 3 or 4 Fatigue to get back to the docks, but once there they quickly turn things around. Ninewise actually boards the burning boat and helps Starke's family out of the cabin. The fire is extinguished without fatalities. They leave Hrulgar guarding their suspect. All alone. With Bischoff. I'm just about to have Bischoff attack the lone dwarf, when it occurs to me that there's actually a better play for my villain. He lets them City Watch take the arsonist, as there's actually a way he can spring the man later, to great effect. That will have to happen in a later session, as we've reached our time for this week. Late afternoon, Day 2. End of Session 2. Since the PCs saved Starke's family, the Criminal Empire's agenda does not advance. Further, as they have stood up to Bischoff in a semi-public fashion, the Stability rating of the Criminal Empire goes down by 1 to 7. Well done. Party Tension is at 4. The players have a (burning) boatload of Fatigue and Stress, but only 1 wound (on the Wizard, I think it was the bane effect of one of her spells). I meticulously note how much Fatigue and Stress per player just in case they start the next session by attacking Bischoff. I also make myself a note that I need to give the Dwarf some spotlight time next week, as this session he mostly waited around while other people did things.

valvorik said: BTW, I realized my homebrew NPC cards to track people at the Menagerie even don't include Claudia von Leitdorf. I've done one for her, and miscellaneous other extras and will send it out to those who requested the material. Any chance you could send that out in .pdf or .jpg (or even in Strange Eon's format) instead of .docx? I'm on a Mac and my Open Office is being really weird with the resized ones you'd sent out before. It won't let me see or edit any page after the first one. It still prints them, but slightly larger than the printable area of my printer, so the cards at the edge of the page end up missing several pixels. It's not a huge deal, but it would be helpful. Thanks again for all the great props and ideas, Valvorik. Bischoff in particular has been invaluable, and the timeline has really help when the players asked questions I didn't know the answers to. I've made use of several of the Rambrecht Delfholt pamphlets as well, and made one of my own about the Taxidermist Conspiracy to go with them. Don't know if that'd be useful to you, but I could send the text of it your way if it's of interest.

This is repeated from another thread where I wrote about the characters a day after we made them. I figured I'll add it here too because there's some important keys here to character background and the stuff about Burgolt's dad which will eventually really matter. Character creation went amazingly well. I really love the background cards, and everything that element brought to the PC's 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. 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. It's like winning the plotline lottery! 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.

SPOILER ALERT: This is a campaign log for the new The Enemy Within for Warhammer 3rd Ed. Spoilers abound! There are several similar threads, and I'm writing a few weeks after the events, so I may skip over details here and there. Also, I'm using Valvorik's awesome play aids and ideas for a number of scenes. He's done some really top-notch work that made this all a lot easier for me to run. Our player characters are: Edler Burgolt von Engler, a Gently-Born nobleman, Pistolier, and third son of Frieherr Peczold von Engler, a local Baron. Ninewise Gyre, an Initiate of Ranald who is also an acquitted Criminal. Lina, Ninewise's sister, recently returned to Averheim from the distant university where she studied Bright Order Wizardry and other Academic topics. Hrulgar Steelheart, a Dwarven Runesmith and businessman. He is Battle-Scarred from his time at the Third Battle of Blackfire Pass. When the game opens up, the players are about to have a breakfast meeting at a Tavern called the White Horse to discuss an unpleasant piece of previous business. Hrulgar, being a professional businessman and the only member of the party likely to use Conservative stance, shows up early. The rest of the party Recklessly show up late or at the last minute, as usual, so he has a few minutes before they arrive to shop from the waterfront stalls. He meets Olga Klinski, who tells him the sob story about her husband who went missing a week ago. He buys a fish from her as an act of charity, and then heads to the tavern for the meeting. Sidebar about the previous unpleasant business: For some time they have been aware that Burgolt's father the Baron is engaged in political underhandedness and assorted unpleasant dealings that may even include witchcraft. The party has for sometime been Oathbound to figure out a way to undermine his ambitions (and evils) without bringing down Burgolt's entire family. This is of course a sensitive task, which is part of why they are conducting the conversation in the Wharf District slums where the Baron and his social equals would never set foot. It's also worth noting that Burgolt's older brother was all but disowned (and sent off on some fool's errand) and that Burgolt's mother has been dead less than 2 years but father is already courting other women. Most distressing. Burgolt starts with his latest scoop on dad. Last night, after tying one on (which he does quite often) Burgolt stormed home to tell off his wicked father and renounce his familial ties once and for all, but was unable to get in. The butler and valet refused him entry to his father's Library, where dear old dad was entertaining some unknown visitor. While waiting in the courtyard and being given the run-around, Burgolt saw a dark, cowled figure (hereafter known as The Black Cowl) scale the walls and enter via the balcony attached to his father's study. Normally, Burgolt might have shot this intruder, but not only was he drunk tonight, but he'd actually earlier in the day pawned his family heirloom Superior Pistol to one Mathilda Durbein. Burgolt reported the prowler to the Butler, but either the servants were expecting it or they imagined it merely a drunken hallucination. Either way, Burgolt was again not allowed entry, and so left in a huff. Ninewise asks about The Black Cowl. She's heard that name or description as a possible new crime boss moving in on the Wharfs. There's speculation and discussion of whether the Black Cowl works for Burgolt's father, or the other way around, or if perhaps the Black Cowl was merely spying on Burgolt's meeting. They also begin to discuss whether or not this new crime boss is involved in any of the handful of disappearances they've recently caught wind of. Ninewise had heard that a dockworker named Rolf Haller has recently gone missing. She has a meeting later this very day with Rolf's boss at the Wharf-Rats (one of the Pauper's Guilds in the Wharf District), who wants Ranald's assistance in finding out whether or not their rival guild the Fish were behind the dockworkers disappearance. Hrulgar mentions that an old war buddy of his named Ingo Baerfaust didn't show to a get-together they had planned a few days ago, and wasn't at home the next day either. When he inquired about his friend, he was told that no one had seen him in a week. Are these three missing persons in any way related? Jurgen and Rolf worked in the same area, but Ingo had no obvious connections to the docks or either of them. From here a number of smaller scenes transpired. Ninewise met with the Wharf-Rats boss for more details. She also talked with Ute, a knowledgeable local information-broker, who had some more clues to the way the underworld power structure was being shaken up by the Black Cowl. I made Ute very helpful and friendly. She explained that The Cowl's enforcer or underboss is a tattooed bruiser named Bischoff who recently returned from the Templeman Expedition to the Southlands. Hrulgar scheduled an appointment for the following day with Captain Marcus Baerfaust, the uncle of his missing friend Ingo. Burgolt got into an argument with a street agitator that was disparaging the noble-class. While he was distracted, he was nearly robbed by a pickpocket. Lina's sharp eyes foiled the attempt, but clearly made her an NPC enemy (the first of several, it would turn out) and the scene dished out some Stress and Tension. Cutting through an alleyway, the PCs discovered a body, it's ringed hand sticking out of a shipping crate. The dead man was a local racketeer and enforcer. His distinctive ring was left on the corpse, which they figured might have been done to send a message. Worried that this show of brazen force might further consolidate the Black Cowl's power, Ninewise pocketed the ring before they called the city watch. Burgolt swallowed his pride and returned to his father's manor for his daily allowance. Dad wasn't present, but his Valet was and did the old man's dirty work. He plied Burgolt and company with fine Brandy. He apologized for the previous night, and said that the Baron would be quite busy the next several nights so please be a good boy and stay away. Here's an extra couple Silver in case you need to find a place to crash for the night. Bribe mostly accepted. After the various shorter scenes, the players met up again at another tavern, the Upright Pig. A sidebar about Noblemen and their money: Burgolt has Noble Rank 1, which per the rules means a stipend of 1 Gold (100 Silver) per month. Since the Campaign involves a detailed day-by-day timeline, I decided to break this up into a daily instead of monthly payment. Most months in the Imperial Calendar have 32 to 33 days, so Burgolt will be given 3 Silver per day. Since his father is a wicked and controlling man, Burgolt is required to visit the family manor-home each morning to receive this allowance from his father's money-keeper. Back to the Upright Pig: Ninewise was looking for Gerd Knakk, the leader of The Fish gang, who frequented the tavern. Before finding him, however, she found Bischoff. Bischoff was gambling at a table with some other people they knew. He kinda blew off Ninewise, but told her sister Lina (an obvious Bright Wizard) that he might have a job for her tomorrow, and that if she grabbed a table he'd join her after this round of the gambling was over. Gerd Knakk, the leader of the Fish, came in just then, and Ninewise pulled him aside for a talk. She mentioned Rolf Haller, but Gerd swore he and his workmen had nothing to do with it. She mentioned the Black Cowl, and was told Gerd was uncomfortable talking about that with the Cowl's enforcer just across the bar. She pressed him on it, and found out that the Fish were being leaned on to bend a knee to this new Criminal Empire. At this point, Ninewise took a risk, and it backfired. She pulled out the ring from the body of the racketeer and showed it to the leader of the Fish. He got very tense and quiet, thanked her for the information, and excused himself from the table. Lina was still sitting at the other table adjacent to where Bischoff was gambling, so she couldn't help but notice when Gerd walked over, looked Bischoff in the eyes, and said "You win. We're in." That elicited a lot of face-palming by the players, so it was a good place to call it a night. I adjusted the Criminal Empire's Agenda to 5 and Party Tension to 3. End of session 1. (We just completed session 4, so hopefully I'll find the time to hunt through my notes and put together more logs like this in the next couple days.)

abidibladiduda said: B) I don't know how often you get together to play in one month but you should not award players with more than 1 xp per session or 2 if they actually achieved some very big milestone. If you only award 2 xp that way people should only advance a little more than 1 xp in average per session. Therefor it should not actually happen that they advance too fast for your story. Getting more than 1 career up in 2-3 months seems way too fast for me personally, but that depends on the style I want the game to proceed. Seem likely that we're having a misunderstanding there. I may not have been clear about in-character vs out-of-character time. My group plays once a week, and I hand out 1 XP per session. I'm contemplating handing out 1 bonus XP at the end of chapter 1 of The Enemy Within, but that's at least 4 or 5 sessions from now. So the XP I'm handing out is pretty much exactly what you're saying I _should_ do. My players really enjoy poking around in every corner of the setting, interacting with the NPCs (and there are a lot of them in The Enemy Within), digging up all the mysteries, hamming it up in character, etc. Things keep happening and everyone's having fun, but the actual core plotline is advancing somewhat slowly. We just finished our fourth session, and are on the early morning of day 4 of the investigation at the start of the campaign. Every session thus far has been a little less than a day of in-character time. I fully expect career completion to take 2 or 3 months of real-life out-of-character time, but it looks like that will happen no later than in-character day 8 or 9 of the scenario notes. abidibladiduda said: If he is a wizard lord he could just leave this career and be a priest or anything else. But he would be stripped of all the privileges he has a wizard lord. And if he wants to return to that career some ppl from his college might tell him to f*** off seeing as he just ran from his responsibilities. This works with almost anything. Maybe this helps. It helps for the big abuses of the exploit, such as swapping careers 4 times in a rank to gain 8 Fortune dice. The more casual career-swapping for an extra die or two here or there seems to be just as problematic over the long-term (judging from everyone telling me to limit or eliminate Fortune advances), and that's not really something I can deter with NPC social pressure. A player could, per the Rules-As-Written, abandon Wizard for Mystic, buy 3 Fortune Dice on Intelligence, and then return to Wizard again for a mere 4 XP total. As I said, that could be as litle as 4 days in The Enemy Within. If he's only behaving "unwizardly" for 4 days, I probably don't want the NPCs telling him to "f*** off" over that. Player Characters in general are often vagabond adventurers, the sort of people who frequently put their professional lives on hold for 3 or 4 days at a time to battle the villain of the week, afterall. abidibladiduda said: It seems to me that you almost try to avoid telling your players what you want your game to be. I don't think that is a fair characterization at all. The player in question is a new addition to our established gaming group. Just as I was planning to start a new campaign, a player's long-distance boyfriend moved to town. It seemed only natural to include him in the new campaign, but I had only met him a few times. I didn't yet have a rapport established with him, and the opportunity to sit down and discuss gaming styles and theory just hadn't happened yet. On his way out the door of the second session, he dropped the bombshell about intending to cherry-pick fortune dice. That got me worried because I had completely missed that exploit in my readings of the rules, and I didn't know him very well so I didn't know how he'd respond to whatever house rule I was going to have to use to plug the hole. I needed to know before the next time I saw him whether or not the exploit he'd pointed out was game-breaking. If people here had said "it looks like a problem on paper, but it actually works out in play" that would have been the end of my worries. Instead, responses included "run you fool" and many warnings about the dangers of fortune dice proliferation. This forum was very helpful with providing me a number of ideas on how to solve the problem. Having those solutions close at hand allowed me to enter confidently into the conversation with the player about the tone of the game, and thus resolve the issue before it became a problem. He's actually really easy to work with, I just didn't know that yet.

k7e9 said: I agree that career transition should be justified in character. Mandating completion might be an option, but that decreases the usefulness of the Reiklander ability. Some of my reiklander players have two careers simultaniously, jumping between them depending on the advances they want next (i.e. beeing adaptable). Do you have any non-Reiklanders in your campaign? What do they think about the Reiklander ability? If I were playing a Dwarf I'd be just fine with the Reiklander ability saving the humans a 1-2 XP per Rank. At that rate, the bonuses for being a Dwarf are a little bit better than the bonuses for being a Human at Rank 1, break even at Ranks 2-3, and start falling behind at Rank 4. That's certainly a fair trade off. But a Reiklander who is jumping back and forth between two or more careers is probably saving 3 or more XP per Rank. Unless the GM is leaning heavily on Corruption points, in a long campaign that human XP divide would quickly start to outstrip what early advantages the Dwarf had. A human is 26 points at character creation (if you count Favoured as Fate like it were a free Talent). The Dwarf is roughly 30 points at character creation. (Derived as 20 + 6 points in bonus Characteristics + 1 skill + Grudge is like a Fortune Advance + Night Vision is like a Talent + 1 wound). I realize those numbers are very rough. Dwarves could be argued higher due to Sturdy (Encumberence doesn't come up much so I didn't count it), and thier bonus white dice vs catching a disease (which is probably worth an XP or two), and their bonus Corruption Threshold (though it's hard to imagine a situation where they'd actually get to use that last one unless the GM is pushing for a TPK). Bonuses that lack synergy with one another are certainly worth less than the equivalent amount in unrestricted XP would be, so I think I'd still eyeball the whole package at 30 points. Humans definitely have an additional advantage in that they've got so many more careers, and I'm not sure how to quantify that, but the XP savings from Adaptable seems likely to be the minimum value there. If adaptable is saving ~4 to 7 XP over the course of a campaign, it's probably fair. If it's saving 12+ XP by Rank 4, it's debatable.

dvang said: Actually, it does nothing to break these careers. First… You raise really good points here about Commoner, Mystic, and any other 3-Fortune-Advance careers. You've won me over on that point. They are definitely not a reason to leave Fortune Dice unrestricted. dvang said: Lastly, keep in mind that PCs often purchase non-career advances, especially skills. (Weaponskill and Ballistic skill for example). These being more expensive and not counting towards transition, this means that the PC won't complete their career by the 'fastest' of 11 XP gained. This means the XP spent at 10-13 (until they can transition) can be used for 'second' advances, as noted above. But, for Reiklanders at least, wouldn't it be more efficient to pick out a whole other career that has the Skill you want and shares 2 keywords with your current career? Given that one of those two keywords will probably be "Basic" and the other either "Urban" or "Rural", you've got a huge pool of potential careers to Cherry-pick from for a single XP. The devil's advocate would ask "Why ever pay double for a skill when career swapping is an option?" Non-career advances are +1 XP each, but swapping to a new career costs a Reiklander a one-time-only charge of 0 to 3 XP (usually 0 or 1 if I'm not mistaken). That is why I don't think the problem is (entirely) Fortune advances. If someone thought it was a good strategy to buy nothing but Wounds, for example, their Reiklander character could cycle through careers to gain 10 Wounds over the course of a Rank. Easily. This makes me suspect that plugging the Fortune Die loophole without also plugging the general cherrypicking loophole means I'm just setting myself up to have to make another houserule again a couple ranks down the road. I'd rather make 1 simple and elegant rule now rather than 2 less elegant rules several months apart. dvang said: Finally, as a GM you have final adjudication (or should) over PC career changes. You are well within your rights of a GM to deny the player from hopping into multiple careers after taking just a single purchase or two. Career changes should fit with the character and the story/situation. I totally know that, and even feel that I "get" it. However, there are two complications worth mentioning: A) The player in question has a lot of D&D 3.X experience. You know, that game where anyone can multiclass (as anything), and the bartender is always a semi-retired adventurer? He's approaching careers as if they were classes in D&D, so all he sees is Optimal vs SubOptimal Build. So I have to sell this player on the notion that Careers in Warhammer aren't just about stats and dice, they're supposed to be more about flavor and story. B) I'm running the new The Enemy Within. My player's reaction to investigation scenarios is to really take their time and leave no stone unturned. At the end of the 3rd session we're still in mid-morning of day 3. I'm worried that the XP system is going to run so much faster than the storyline that career transitions of any sort start sounding artificial. From Apprentice to Master Wizard in about a month? This wouldn't be a major problem, except that it undermines whatever points I try to make to him about Career Transitions needing to make logical sense in-character.

Given that it requires eye-contact, I can happily concede that the circumstances where I'd let this be used mid-combat are pretty rare. Almost entire in one-on-one duels. That said, in my (limited) real-world experience with violence, it certainly is possible to make someone pause, panic, retreat or just have second thoughts about their desire to fight you. That's basically what a morale check is all about. Allowing social actions to be used in a fight is a great way to ensure that the Scribes and Fops have something useful to contribute during a battle, which sounds good to me. To each their own, I guess. Since it's clearly bothering people, I suppose I could go edit my post so that the example is a social encounter instead of a fight. It's no big deal to me. EDIT: Oh right, I can't edit yesterday's post because this forum only gives you a 5 minute edit window. Oh, well. Back on topic, it seemed like Emirikol was asking (in his original post) if this card somehow moved the bad guys initiative token or gave them a free move on your next action, the answer to either of which would be "no". I figure the card is phrased so oddly because of how it interacts with the flexible group initiative system. It would suck to use an action to make someone back away, only to have them swap initiative order to get around it. The weird wording keeps the card from automatically sucking any time there's more than one opponent. Another instance where the exact wording of this card is meaningful would be if the target had the Improved Dodge reaction card and you shot an arrow at them on your next action. If you missed, Improved Dodge would let them make a free manoeuvre to engage you. Not that that's likely happen very often, but it's remotely possible.

We put all our action cards into nine-pocket-pages, organized by the skill used for the action. For the most part, you want actions you're good at, and those yellow dice sure are dependable. Seemed like a natural way to divide it. It made searching for a viable action for a given character really easy. Having just 3 categories (Ranged / Melee / Support) meant there was still a ton to look through and really took time to find anything. Having a tabbed page for each skill makes it much quicker and easier at the table. A few of the actions had more than 1 skill, or different skills on each side. When this happened, I put them in whichever skill had the fewer actions. The last pocket on the last page of each skill has a little piece of paper listing actions filed under other skills that might be worth cross-referencing, as well listings of talents that boost specific skills, etc. The biggest section was, unsurprisingly, Weapon Skill. So I subdivided it further. Any attacks that gave a bonus fortune die if you had some other skill trained went in that skill's section instead. Then I made a page for the handful of actions that use Weapon Skill plus something other than Strength (usually Agility). As the final sort, I made seperate pages for actions that require specific weapon types. Here's the great weapon actions, there's the weapon in each hand actions, and that page is the weapon plus shield actions. Bla bla bla. Within the various pages, I don't worry at all about alphabetizing. The categories are small enough I don't really need it. For spells and blessings I did the same, breaking it out by Faith or Order, then by Rank. In fact, I put the Rank 2+ actions, all the Epic stuff, and anything overpowered in their own binder until after character creation. That way I didn't have to worry about the players accidentally using it before I felt the campaign was ready for it. The whole process took a lot of work, but it really made character creation a breeze. It's also greatly simplified Advancement and just generally looking things up. I'm almost always willing to trade GM effort between sessions for ease and elegance during the game. Plus, my wife gets this weird thrill out of organizing things, so I totally didn't have to go at this alone.

As it stands, this really breaks immersion. One could make a fairly convincing argument that the "best" career route for an Apprentice Wizard invest in skills and actions at character generation, then buy 2 Fortune Dice in Intelligence as a Wizard, swap to Mystic for 1 XP, 3 Fortune Dice in Intelligence as Mystic, swap to Scout or Barber-Surgeon for 1 XP, 2 Fortune Dice in Intelligence as that career, then return to Apprentice Wizard for free because you're a Reiklander. We're running The Enemy Within right now, and so far each session has been a day. Wizard-to-Mystic-to-Scout-to-Barber-back-to-Wizard in a week and a half? That's not a character arc, that's a manic episode. I don't want to play in a game where that's not merely possible, but mechanically encouraged. Clearly some sort of house-rule is in order. Restricting the number of Fortune Dice to character Rank is a distinct possibility, but that kind of breaks careers like Mystic and Commoner. They have 3 Fortune Dice on their Advances list, so having more Fortune Dice is their schtick. Commoner, in particular, would be very unappealing without that 3rd Fortune Die. I'm not sure how big a deal that is (who wants to be a commoner anyway?), but I also haven't gone looking to see if there are any 3-Fortune careers in the latter ranks that this might impact. I don't particularly think that 3 Fortune Dice in a Rank is broken, as long as it's a trade-off for other things, but 8 to 12 Fortune Dice in a Rank certainly is. Plus, simply limiting Fortune Dice this still leaves cherry-picking an option if what you really wanted was a broad base of skill dice, or more actions, or extra wounds, or whatever. Mandating career completion strikes me as a stronger option, as it makes that Advances grid on the Career Sheet actually have some meaning. The only real problem I see with this would be if some poor Dwarf ended up terribly dishonored on session 5 or 15. Thematically he should convert to troll-slayer, but mandated completion would stop that. Perhaps a better version of that then would be "You may only abandon a Career mid-stream _once_ in the life of any given character." That would allow for some reaction to life-altering circumstances, but not be readily abusable. Maybe the real solution is just "All career transitions must be justified in-character." I like how that puts the priority on the setting and flavor, not the mechanical advantages. However I could see that leading to some ugly perceptions of favortism if the GM agrees with the story behind one player's proposed transition but can't wrap his head around what the other player is suggesting. Some careers, especially the more vaguely named ones, are easier to explain how you might qualify.