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Rich P
United Kingdom
Sheffield
United Kingdom
I didn't know what to do with my UberBadge, so I left it as a GeekBadge.
Back home after a world tour. How quickly a year goes...
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I've been making notes on our WFRP sessions for a while now, so I thought I'd post them here for Geekdo readers' amusement. We are playing through Alfred Nunez Jr.'s [rpgseries=1651], starting with [rpgitem=47677], in which the PCs are hired by a Verenan priest to search for a missing scholar believed to have disappeared in the haunted forest of Eppiswald. The setting is a post-Enemy Within Empire, with the civil war of 2514 having wreaked havoc on much of the central and northern Empire.
The first session was given to character creation. None of the players had particular characters in mind, so they each rolled three different characters and chose the one they preferred. All my players are quite happy to roll randomly for most aspects of their character and use those random rolls to inspire their background and history. They all chose to be human and male. Here’s what we ended up with:
Leon De Sailie – Pharmacist (played by Simon)
Simon rolled up five characters, because two of them didn’t have stats high enough to pick any career class. I think he chose the Pharmacist because he likes playing unusual careers and wanted to try out the Manufacture Drugs skill. He rolled up Gisoreux in Bretonnia as his birthplace and has the distinguishing characteristic of being one-eyed. (Strangely enough, Simon’s last character lost an eye to the Chaos Dwarf Slavers in [rpgitem=47679], so it’s becoming something of a habit.) Leon is a liar, drug dealer, poisoner and coward who fled his home town (not sure why yet) and crossed the Montdidier Pass to the Empire. Having been reduced to very little, he needs to make money somehow and has taken to posing as a respectable travelling doctor. He will do his best to help the Verenan mission (as long as it doesn’t require too much bravery), as the money is good, but will attempt to make a bit on the side by scamming peasants.
(name to be decided) – Thief (Burglar) (played by John)
John rolled up a very nimble Thief (base Initiative of 40, plus Lightning Reflexes). On determining height, weight and build, it transpired that this guy was massive – a huge, imposing man who probably uses intimidation in his thefts. He was born in Pfeildorf and has a large extended family. At that time, I hadn’t read the Pfeildorf chapter of the campaign in detail, so I didn’t know whether it would be a problem or not. I told John that I’d check and let him know. Perhaps it would be easier (in terms of running the campaign) if he came from a small village outside of Pfeildorf, or even somewhere else entirely? I’m concerned his criminal connections in the city might make the adventure awkward; or maybe they’ll make it even more interesting. I wondered whether he could be affiliated to one of the gangs in Pfeildorf, but was concerned that this could be overly distracting when the PCs arrived there.
Lucius Gandolfini – Thief (Fisher) (played by Tim)
Tim rolled up two completely useless characters and a decent Thief. We didn’t really want two characters of the same career in the party, but they both liked what they’d rolled up so I let them each choose a different specialisation. John picked Burglar and Tim picked Fisher (from [rpgitem=43653]) for Lucius. The two thieves are polar opposites, with Lucius being small and scrawny and less keen on physical contact than his counterpart. The dice decided this character was from Remas in Tilea - another foreigner. Maybe he travelled along the underground river to Kreutzhofen? He too rolled a rather large extended family back in Tilea, with a wife and child in Teufelfeuer, Reikland. I seem to remember this village being burnt down by a witch hunter in [rpgitem=45140], so Tim decided that was the end of his family, leaving him free for adventure.
Heinrich Inseldorf – Mercenary (played by Duncan)
Bizarrely, Duncan’s character comes from the Border Princes. We had a strange set of rolls last night – I’ve never seen anyone roll up a foreign character before and now we had three. Heinrich is from an ex-pat Imperial family, born in a tough, frontier town. He’s the party’s only dedicated warrior, but can also read and write. His background wasn’t fully decided during this session, but some ideas included the possibility that he was involved in the recent civil war to some extent. Now that it’s over, his unit has disbanded and he’s looking for something else to do, which led him to join up with the next character.
Heironymus Nachtleutende – Bounty Hunter (played by Jake)
This is Jake’s first WFRP character and he’s not as familiar with the background as the rest of the group, so I expect he’ll be looking to them for guidance at first. He rolled up a lucky Bounty Hunter from Altdorf, but he didn't flesh out the character’s history any further during the session. I’m going to give him a primer to provide more information about the world that he might not know from playing WFB – something like the “What Your Characters Know about the World” section from [rpgitem=47296]. Once he’s read and digested that, he should be able to fill in the background for Heironymus. As a bounty hunter, he has reason to worship Verena and get involved in the plot of [rpgitem=47677].
So those are the five characters for the campaign. This party may have some difficulties and come across some unenlightened attitudes since they feature three non-Imperials among their number, but I think this would also happen if any of them had chosen to play non-humans. They have nobody with Sixth Sense or Night Vision and no magic users, but I’m not envisaging problems with that. The only thing I’m slightly concerned with is having two thieves and a corrupt pharmacist. Will these characters be too selfish and unscrupulous to involve themselves in the adventure for anything other than personal gain? I find that if you have an evil character, or worse a whole group of them, you often miss out on the dilemmas and moral grey areas that WFRP does so well. So I’ll try to get my players to think about why their character would join up with the others and get involved in the scenario – something beyond monetary consideration would be useful.
The first session of play can be found here: The Rising Shadow (Part 1)
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Simon Crowe
United Kingdom
Sheffield
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Leon is not a coward! He's the only sane person in the Warhammer world... he knows it is a dangerous place and tries to steer clear of that danger. If that involves running away from a fight then that's what he'll do.
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Interesting character set up. reading this makes me wanna play WFRP...
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