Enemy Within - for GM thoughts, prep ideas etc.

[Xathrodox86 22]

You really need the boxed set for its cards etc. (that Villainous Monologue card is golden, "I expect you to die Mr. Bond") but can buy pdf here:

 

http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product/108562/Warhammer-Fantasy-Roleplay-The-Enemy-Within

I was talking about the Southlands Campaign. Unless there isn't one and I got it wrong?

[valvorik 271]

Oh, sorry for the confusion, there are no official Southlands materials, that's the reason I've been working on Southlands support material (see that thread).

[Xathrodox86 22]

Oh, sorry for the confusion, there are no official Southlands materials, that's the reason I've been working on Southlands support material (see that thread).

 

That's what I meant, and I have to say that your work and this thread are great and truly inspiring. Will definetly lurk here some more.

[Noelyuk 95]

Typical Valvorik. Modest to a fault. There he is praising your hard work to the hilt and you think he's talking about Enemy Within

[Xathrodox86 22]

Typical Valvorik. Modest to a fault. There he is praising your hard work to the hilt and you think he's talking about Enemy Within

 

Well not too many people nowdays are doing something truly original for WFRP, so projects like this are always welcome and inspiring.

[1digitalnative 0]

Valvorik, could you please send me your material on TEW, especially the menagerie scene? I plan to run it this weekend and love your ideas on how to amend that scence, which was not at all to my liking in the book... Great work just telling from your posts! My e-mail: lawyers@gmx.de

Edited March 13, 2015 by 1digitalnative

[valvorik 271]

Sent along (you might want to edit your email out of the post to avoid webcrawlers grabbing it for spam use).

[Xathrodox86 22]

I humbly second the request of 1digitalnative.

[valvorik 271]

PM me email address and your wish is my command

[Xathrodox86 22]

Thanks, already did.

[Lotin 0]

Hi all !

Sorry for exhuming the thread.

 

I've been reading  interventions of each ones as i'll start to run TEW very soon. I've found a lot of ideas, time now to work on my (and my party's) vision of the campaign. Is it possible Valvorik to get your TEW material ?? Thanks a lot !

[valvorik 271]

PM received, materials sent.

[Lotin 0]

Thanks !! At first look, what an impressive work !! Very good job...

[valvorik 271]

Comments welcome, I admit I only occassionally return to it and correct things, like updating and consolidating travel and lodgings rules extracted and (hopefully) improved.

[kachobo 3]

Always you can put some rumors in the local pub or a NPC with the rigth info, an encounter beetween the scenes .... roleplaying the place a little more and take them to the rigth path

[Crazy Aido 139]

Hey, I'm ideally going to have first session of this tomorrow.

 

There will be a few changes...

 

I'll be using our groups old PC's in place of the major NPC's, altered slightly to let them blend in a little more.

 

Bearfast is now a High Elf Swordmaster, Captain of a mercenary company that stepped in at the battle of third black fire.

 

Maur is now a fire wizard/ex-acolyte of Morr. Otherwise he's still an amusing eccentric.

 

Von Kaufman is now a preist of Ranald, and Red-Arrow is a front for a massive smuggling operation.

 

Going to see how the adventure progresses, but looking forward to using some of the excellent material provided to *ahem* improve my PC's experience.

[k7e9 211]

Sounds cool. I have done it "the other way around", I incorporated major (and some minor) NPCs from TEW in my groups previous adventures.

At the moment the current PCs are part of the southlands expedition.

 

So when we start TEW they have been part of some of the background to TEW. 

[Crazy Aido 139]

Starting to consider moving the Middenheim chapter from the City of the white wolf to Ubersreik. The mentor characters are all from there or had connections to the place, of course, this will mean that the ritual section will need to be altered significantly. But I think there's some fun that can be had there...

[Ralzar 198]

Arise from your grave!

 

So, I've spent the holidays starting to plan this campaign. Seeing as I finally managed to kill off the rank 6 leader of our party and we finished our 5 year campaign in norsca and the chaos wastes. Time to get back to basics: dirty scoundrels, corrupt nobles and chaos cults!

 

So, the background cards were a really good idea. But they frustrated me so much. As many others have commented, the Foreign Messenger and Outcast are not really tied into the adventure at all. Sure, the Foreign Messenger card throws you a bone by mentioning in one sentence that you are also there to help the people you deliver letters to. But it just seems weird. If I was delivered a letter which expected a response and the delivery guy asked if he could do anything more for me I would say "Yeah... you can deliver my response...?"

 

Also, despite all the questions you get to answer during character creation the cards barely, if at all, accomplish the two things I expected them to be there for: Give strong motivations for the characters to take part in the adventure and to tie the characters together so it's natural for them to cooperate. Instead the cards set up some characters to be specifically antagonistic towards eachother and give them vague reasons to maybe be in the dock area so they might run into the other characters.

Of cource this can all be salavaged by the players and GM rp'ing. But I find it so weird that the creators of the campaign included this tool and then didn't use it to solve the two biggest problems for a starting group.

 

So, I wound up making my own version of the questions instead, so I could tweak things to give the characters a bit more motivation up front. (I would post these, but they're in norwegian)The start of the adventure is written problematically tough. If a character is too invested in solving the dockside mysteries (say a good friend is missing), he will be very reluctant to waste a day with the missing coach bit. So the characters have to be interested in the adventure, but not too interested?

 

The Reckless Dice podcast of TEW has been a GREAT help by the way. It's awsome seeing how it comes together. Although it's super frustrating when the GM forgets some detail from the adventure that I know since I'm reading the book when not listening to the podcast

 

Anyway, to get the timing Book 1 straight in my head and to help the players puzzle out the whole timing thing of the dissapprearances, I made a player aide and a GM aid in the form of a Calendar for the month of Sigmarzeit. This assumes that day 1 is Sigmartag, which makes it easy to keep track of. There is a blank calender that can be given to the players at some point if they start trying to figure out when diffrent events happened that should be printed out so they can make notes on it. Then there's a GM version that has all rainy days marked and all persons killed/taken marked. Notice that they are marked on the day they can be discovered to be missing/taken. Which means the morning after they were taken/killed. It's a bit akward since we naturally think in days, not nights. But the calendar works if you remember that each day actually starts at midnight, not when people get up in the morning.

 

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/pvswubcv0wqlois/AABdTErIluF3h7UVjemVdeB3a?dl=0

 

I am considering the players possibly finding someone that keeps track of the weather. For example a scholar in the Sun Society with an interest in weather patterns. Or perhaps just a boatmans logbook containing daily notes about weather conditions.

Edited January 2, 2017 by Ralzar

[Ralzar 198]

I’ve GM’ed 4 sessions of TEW so far. I’ve mostly followed the adventure as printed. Although I added the “Bischoff” character to give the BC organization a face and possibly connect the adventure more with the southlands campaign.

Edit:

Oh yeah and one more change I tohught was elegant: The mutants stole the black powder. The bandits were told by BC to go meet the mutants and say they worked for the "Red Crown". The mutants give the bandits the black powder. The bandits then meet some BC representatives outside town and sell them the powder. Neither the bandits or the BC people know anything about the Red Crown. To them it's just a password.
This serves a couple of purposes: Increases the chance of the characters hearing the name "Red Crown". Solidifies the impression that BC is moving a lot of diffrent factions around like playing pieces.

/Edit

 

Observations so far:

 

 

• ·         You really should work with your players when creating characters and make sure that the characters created are going to fit into the adventure. The background cards help flesh out the characters but are of little help to give them motivations. I had to basically write in one characters mother and have her guilt him into making an effort to give the character some motivation to participate.
• ·         I only have 2 (should be 3, but one has been a bit AWOL lately). With only 2-3 players you start missing out on NPC connections. No one has the Academic background, so there’s no connection to the Sun Society or Mauer.
• ·         The adventure progresses pretty fast if the players do not distract themselves. After 4 sessions (2 of which was partially eaten by character creation) they are already at the day before the garden party.
• ·         After only a day or two of investigation on the docks the players pretty much ran out of information to gather. They just kept getting the same information over and over again which was predictably uninteresting.
• ·         There is nothing in the book that points out that rain washes away prints. Or anything that makes the characters aware of the mudbanks. Why isn’t there a mudlark NPC with interesting information? Or some encounter tied up to the mudbanks? Like a boat run aground for example.
• ·         The “Clue Cards” included in the game are a decent idea, but there’s not enough and they’re a bit odd. I really reacted to the “Strange smell”-card. It says the characters encountered a strange smell at several occasions. But as far as I can see, there is only one occasion: the bushes at the garden party. I had to write in my own smell-encounter at the docks to tie it up.
• ·         Maybe my players are particularly dense. Or maybe it’s because they’re just 2 when brainstorming. But they are nowhere close to figuring out anything to do with the disappearances or murders. Even when I made them cluecards with the NPCs and where they were last seen etc, specifically mentioning rain. I even had the missing NPC friend of the Battle-Scarred character leave his room untouched. The only thing missing was his boots and raincloak. At this point the only way to make the hints more obvious would be to start throwing water in their faces during play.

 

 

At this point they are just getting clues but not doing anything with them as they have mostly given up trying to solve anything on the docks and are more interested in working for von Kaufman. I have the feeling that this is pretty much how the adventure is “intended” to be played though. I can totally see how this is where many groups of players wind up.

Then the garden party happens and there suddenly big clues pointing back to the original mystery and a big reward offered for solving it.

 

 

I think my biggest problem with the adventure in book 1 is that it can’t seem to decide if it’s a railroad or not. It implies that it should be played much like the Winds Of Change adventure (which was excellently constructed) but it’s written as a railroad.

I particular dislike the fact that the adventure does not let you FAIL and then move on. The adventure pretty much has to end with the showdown and the characters being in possession of the artefact.

 

 

If I was to run this again I would completely restructure it. Book 1 should have been a source-book with three main locations: Docks, Plenzerplats and Averburg. Then give relevant info about each NPCs in the area.

Chaos Stars on checks would move a tracker forward to the next rain and just leave it up to the GM who is taken during the night.

All the major NPCs would have missions to offer characters they like. For example a mission about finding deserters for Baerfaust and a mission to the temple of Morr to examine bodies for Mauer.

And there would be a lot more redundant clues laying around pointing in the same direction.

The finale would be either discovering the place of the ritual or tracking down one of the BCs hideouts where the artefact could be found. Finding the ritual would be the better ending where you would get more rewards but a harder fight. While the BCs hideout ending would be raise more questions about who the BC really is.

Edited February 3, 2017 by Ralzar

[Ralzar 198]

So I just finished another session with a couple of alterations from the original material.

 

 

My third player finally showed up again. He’s a Thief who was only there for one session where he took part in the barge fire. He tripped over a gong-farmers wheelbarrow while chasing the arsonists so he disappeared to clean himself off.

So, to write him in again I gave him a small “Choose You Own Adventure”-style story to play through. Which basically went like this:

That night Frederic Grosz takes him to Hermann Helheimer. (This is the same night that Hermann will later die and be found in an alley the next day and be studied by Luminary Mauer)
On the way over to Hermann, they pass Ute, who is running home in the rain. (Ute will be missing next morning)
Hermann gives him a mission to find out what the Black Cowls people are up to.
The Thief sneaks along the mud banks in the rainy night (this points out that it’s possible to traverse the mudbanks and that any tracks get washed away) to get to a horse and cart by the Upright Pig.
He tries to look inside the cart and is forced to hide in there when the gang comes back and takes off.
They take the cart to a barn outside the city where they meet the bandits (the same ones who later try to rob Clothilde von Alptraum). The group from the city pays the bandits for kegs of gunpowder. The leaders of the two groups discuss how uncomfortable they are working with mutants and that the code word “Red Crown” worked to have the mutants cooperate.
The Thief sees that the bandit wears something brightly yellow under his cloak (Averheim uniform) and that the leader of the gang from the docks has a fish tattooed on his upper arm (actually a dolphin, but the Thief doesn’t know the difference). He does not see their faces.
Back in the city, he manages to sneak off the cart and tries to follow them. But is attacked by a cowled figure. He partially awakens while being dragged through the back alleys towards the river. Suddenly, some dockers in a fight over Rolf Haller bursts out a door and startles the cowled figure. The Thief staggers into a Shallyan soup kitchen and doesn’t remember any more until he awakens in the Shallyan Temple several days later. He had several small wounds on his back and a cut with grey edges.

 

 

They spend some time trying to figure out if the Fishes docker gang is actually behind things. The priest of the group rolls a Chaos Star while alone in the Upright Pig. Someone says they have information about the Black Cowl and tricks him into an alley where three thugs in hoods tries to beat him up.

The Thief runs into a scene at the docks: A merchant has dropped a box of wares and it has fallen into the mud by the docks. A mudlark called Jorg claims it’s now his, but the merchant can buy it from him. No one wants to go down into the disgusting mix of mud and offal from sewer pipes to retrieve the box.

(This again points out to the group that the mud banks are there, you can walk on them and a lot of the dock industry has pipes and stuff leading out of the wall here.)

 

Next day is the garden party. Which works as intended. Although I wrote one set of instructions for gold tiered characters (Welcome to the party. Walk around, talk to the guests. Make sure things go smoothly.) and one for silver/copper (There you are. Put on these uniforms. Keep an eye out for trouble. Don’t speak unless spoken to.)

I also included the Gently-Born characters mother as one of the guests. I might switch to her bodyguard being attacked instead of Giselbert, since the gently-born character has a stronger connection to his mothers bodyguard.

I changed the crocodile to a skink, but no one cared. Once one of them smelled the bad smell, they got obsessed with tracking it down. They managed to convince Luminary Mauer to help them find the spot in the hedges.

I included the artist from the expedition with a dolphin tattoo, so they figured out it probably wasn’t the Fishes after all.

I used some of the conversation options suggested in this thread, but things mostly ran by themselves without me having to help. Then we had to finish for the evening. Next time the witch hunter will enter.

Edited February 9, 2017 by Ralzar

[Ralzar 198]

My players are so far suspecting allmost all the right people.

Mauer: He seemed nervous when he heard a witch hunter was in town and he pretty much threw them out when they started asking questions about his sister. Oh, and he's a wizard.

Baerfaust: They are aware that even though he seem to dislike the burden of office, he has kept it for two years. And they are really suspicious of the city watch after the bandit stuff and a couple of examples of corruption. Baerfaust is in command of the watch...

Kaufman: He's their employer and has mostly been nothing but helpfull. But they are concentrating more and more on the southlands campaign being the source of everything. And once they realize that the campaign was funded by Kaufman and Johann Templemann died there, their natural paranoia will do the rest

 

I am surprised by how well the adventure works so far. Allthough I would still prefer to change the basic structure, the adventure develops quite naturally. Or at least it has for my players. Allthough they haven't been able to actually figure anything out, there is a constant movement forward because of the assignments from von Kaufman. And they keep coming up with their own pet theories that makes them suspect just about everyone.

[Ralzar 198]

I just discovered something of a blunder in Book 1:

Book 1 has a list of NPCs at the Docks. Then it has a list of information and rumors at the docks.

In this list of rumors is one about a strange battle-hardened woman hanging around the White Horse who looks to be a member of the witch hunters. This is obviously Adele Ketzenblum.

My players trawled through the docks the first couple of days and easily heard this rumour. Since then, they have been doing regular pit-stops at the White Horse to try to get in contact with this Witch Hunter. It seems like a pretty big red flag that there's a mysterious witch hunter hanging around the docks. One of the characters even tried to break into her room.

And I can totally see why. As a player I would have done the same. As GM I had a bit of a problem, since there is absolutely NO information about handling this. I thought it was weird. If they got into her room, what was in there? If they managed to track her down, what would she say? There was no guidelines at all.

 

Then I get to Book 2 and read a blurb about Adele Ketzenblum there. Page 64, first line about Adele: "After her appearance at Graf Friedrichs menagerie party, Adele Ketzenblum took rooms at the White Horse"

Wait, so Adele wasn't even there until 7 days into the adventure?! Wouldn't that be kind of relevant to inform the GM about in book 1?

I solved it by having the room at the White Horse just being a dummy-room. Same as she does in Middenheim. So if the characters manage to get into the room, it is empty and untouched.

Still though, jeez. The campaign is mostly pretty good but it should have been completely restructured.

Edited February 12, 2017 by Ralzar

[Silke 13]

Good inputs and obsevationsRalzar

[dertarr 18]

Yeah, this room at White Horse should be a dummy one. Perhaps she even hired some boy to look over the room and report to her of any suspicious activity.
It seems strange to me that in Averheim she uses White Horse (which is in brass tier) for cover, and in Middenheim she uses The Prospect (which is in gold tier) for the same purpose.
In the first part there is no reason for PC to talk to her up until the latest events at least. If PC insist, Adele would not want to talk to them - they are strangers and of no use.
Breaking into her room or trying to detend her is surely a criminal activity, and PCs should be warned against that.