Introduction

I was developing what I thought was an extremely nice little scenario idea, full of colour, some humour and a nice little investigation. Having developed the idea, I then considered at what point the PCs should enter and then things came unstuck. What was I expecting and how on earth could it work with my players, who would certainly catch on far too quickly for anything to develop? This, then, set me off onto one of my tangents concerning the nature of scenario writing for low and high fantasy games - and hence this article!

The Scenario

The adventure revolves around Johann Dietz, a successful businessman, well-respected alderman and senior master in the Futterinnungsmeister (the Guild of Forage Merchants). As an aside this is another example of how I use my ideas on guilds as general background to flesh out my NPCs and general adventure situations. The guild is responsible for ensuring that the households of local notables are always provided with oats. It is combined with the Rope-makers Guild, although there is an internal power struggle between the two. This is the opportunity to add extra NPCs to muddy the waters and expand the investigation beyond the obvious. It is not relevant to my article here, but the inter-guild struggle shows that the NPCs lead ordinary lives and interact with many people within it. For the GM, it makes the adventure more realistic and the opportunity to quickly write up another half-dozen suspects and colourful geezers that might lead to further adventures.

Johann is married, to a second wife, who he has learned to loathe as she married him for his wealth and position. If we make her his ex-maid, this might solicit a variety of reactions from the PCs operated by our modern-day gamers. After all, many dislike her as she is 'the wrong class' and even if she were a money seeker, so are they! Once again, I wonder if this is 'right' since PCs perhaps ought to operate within these social norms too. Then again, if players enjoy siding with a fellow prole, who am I to say that this is 'wrong'? However, PC reactions to her and her plight will fundamentally affect the game. He is also dying and has sworn that his wife will have none of his money. He buries it secretly and then dies and swears on his deathbed to return from the dead to protect his hoard should it prove necessary. This upsets all his family, some of whom believe that they could grab the money from the wife. (Again, to add further twists, the PCs might consider this suspicious and interrogate various candidates who would benefit from Johann's death. We would also need to consider the legal implications concerning a wife's right to her husband's property). Not to be swindled out of her 'dues', the wife hires a diviner to search out the hoard, and is accompanied by other members of the family to keep an eye on her and their share (or lack thereof). (First thought: are the PCs employed at this point?).

The diviner finds the hoard after a host of 'colourful' evocations and assorted hocus pocus (and if players are present how might they react to this?), but a series of 'hauntings' take place and everyone flees the site. Hiding in the house that night, the haunting continues as furniture is thrown about, walls rattle and crockery is smashed. The diviner agrees to return the following day to try again, together with exorcism materials. (Again, are the PCs employed here?). The same happens, and what is worse is that the hoard has moved by about 10 feet overnight. Everyone flees again. After some persuasion, the diviner agrees to return again, together with a priest of his acquaintance. He never returns and is found to have left town, and the hoard is discovered missing the following day. (This might be the best point to appoint PCs, but they lose the whole atmosphere and simply go on a manhunt. One twist, of course, is that the wife has made a deal with the diviner).

The High Fantasy Gung-Ho Approach

Whilst it should not happen, the traditional Dungeons & Dragons response to this type of scenario would, of course, be to attack the spirit with whatever relevant weapons applied. Simple 'detection' spells would see right through the diviner if he was a fake, and so the whole scenario would probably have to be real. Given a high fantasy environment ghosts and the like would be well known and appropriate actions could be taken, perhaps even with the body before burial. I have always struggled to comprehend the logic of D&D. If magic is so plentiful then the entire fabric of the world would be different than the traditional low magic romanticised peasant village that is portrayed. For example, a Continual Light spell is so plentiful (second level spell) that no one would use lanterns or oil; simply place the spell on a stone and put a hood over it in daylight. The cost of a second level spell would repay itself over a very few years.

Generally, then, the aim of my adventure would simply not work here. No-one would be afraid of flying clods of earth or broken pots or thrown pans or banging on walls. If it was all a fake, then the simplest spells would reveal it. If it were real, then a fight would immediately ensue. The only possible solution would be to create a new 'monster type' or some sort of deus ex machina to explain events and hinder players. Now, whilst WFRP is portrayed as a low magic world I also wonder how many PCs would also quiver at these scenic, yet ultimately safe, events?

Role-Playing Warhammer-style

For my adventure to work, the players have to be partners in the general theme here, and that is that there is a supernatural, that it is very dangerous and frightening, and that it is beyond their skills to deal with. Certain parties might reasonably argue that they have the skills to deal with this (which is a reason that any adventure needs care and testing when it is being written). Any group with a priest (particularly of Mórr) would probably render the basic principle untenable. Rational players are going to see through the pretence very quickly and resolve the whole thing. One reaction is that there is nothing inherently wrong with this. The scenario will still run for a couple of hours, some of the 'colour' will have been played through, and the players can enjoy sleuthing around and be rewarded for satisfactorily uncovering the malefactors (a rare enough occurrence in my game!). Whilst neither plays a major part in my game, I always revert to a bit of monster bashing and a bit of investigation every so often to freshen things up and change the pace.

However, notwithstanding that the players will have enjoyed themselves, I am left with the feeling that they have somehow rushed the denouement, and lost the wonder of how a plot unfolds slowly as they can only react to events that are placed before them. The ability of a NPC diviner to convince rational players that the supernatural is about is highly unlikely. Whilst he should be able to scare PCs that are already highly paranoid and suffering insecurities. I do not believe that this is a criticism of my players (and it certainly is not meant that way; I actually have a good bunch), but can I realistically expect them to role-play to this extent (I am not sure that I could) and if I do am I strait-jacketing them into being passive watchers whilst I unroll my adventure tapestry in front of them? That would be arrogant and self-interested surely; as GM I should endeavour to allow them to have the fun.

WFRP Mis-Balance

Warhammer FRP has a second problem too, in that there is a lack of balance between the high and low end of fantasy. Some groups are far more powerful than others, but without any game reason for this; it is simply a product of ad hoc game design and lack of testing (that bugbear again). In my own campaign, I needed to create a small wizard order for various in-game purposes. As we are in Kislev, it seemed an excellent opportunity to use the Ice Wizards in Realms of Sorcery. Oh dear! Why a man would even contemplate the career, I have no idea. Surely it is better to award women more powers than simply give men less, since this utterly unbalances male wizards compared with non-shamans. Better still would be to offer women modification to increase their averages, and then no statistical maximisation is broken. Equally, the best that an ice wizard can ever hope for is to have their actual MPs available; most of the year, they lose them. Since Chaos is quite likely to attack during the Summer (it is the military campaigning season after all) then the nation's natural guardians are pretty much uselessly at half power. Things get worse when one examines their available spells. Not only are they pretty useless and expensive, equivalent non-ice shaman spells are far more efficacious. No wonder Kislev is going to the dogs.

At a recent convention, the scenario provided us with a powerful set of elf PCs, each with approximately 3500 experience points. There were two clerics. Mine was a second level Cleric of Kurnous and my ultra powerful character had the following spells: Produce Small Creature, Zone of Silence, Dark Sight, Stealth, Flight, Fleetfoot, Breathe Underwater, Detect Magic, Magical Might, Verdant Tracking and Shape Change. Now before everyone rushes off to check their Realms of Sorcery, most of my spells simply recreated standard skills that as an elf and level 2 cleric I had as standard. My 'best' spells allowed me to change into a normal animal (giant and fantastical creations were excluded) or increase my Strength characteristics by 1 (at a cost of 5MPs). The second cleric had similarly powerful spells (note that this is sarcasm): Zone of Warmth, Knock Down, Petty Healing, Weaken Poison, Detect Magic, Cure Light Injury, Immunity from Poison, Enthuse, Anger of the Woods, Rally, Bridge of Vines and Mystic Mist. Unsurprisingly we spent most of the adventure being useless, although I did manage to kill a few pesky dwarfs. The sad thing is that if the dwarfs were not already effectively broken men (by hideous tyranids; the adventure was ultimately to prevent infestation) they could probably have killed me as first career miners.

The game mechanics aside (and it is very difficult to put these aside) our source material is equally confusing. I simply cannot accept that wizards would clean out the latrines, do the dusting and make the beds (Realms of Sorcery) nor that displays of flying wizards (Power Behind the Throne) would be appropriate to rare (feared) users of magic, even at a major carnival.

Conclusions

I am not entirely sure what to conclude, since I am not trying to argue a particular point. Writing adventures is always a difficult mixture of art, skill, science and luck - and many published scenarios fail all or some of these criteria in my experience. Where one is writing for one's own group, one has a decided advantage in being able to estimate reactions and how players role-play the environment. That said, I am still left wondering how we can truly play with all the fear and wonder (and humour) of this low fantasy gothic game.