Rel
Liquid Awesome
I love me some WFRP2!
It's funny, the gaming group I've got now sort of got together back in college and the first time we ever played a game together it was WFRP. So we've kinda come full circle. We finished up our first WFRP2 campaign just before Christmas and now I'm back in the GM chair starting tonight to run my first full blown WFRP2 campaign. I'm totally psyched about it!
The thing about WFRP is that it is similar enough to D&D in terms of mechanics for the players to pick up fairly quickly. But they can't let that fool them into thinking it's exactly the same. And you as the GM especially can't fall into that mindset. As a real quick example, three Goblins are something that even a first level party in D&D is going to brush aside fairly easily. Six Goblins are enough to show some concern over. Ten Goblins are a pretty tough challenge but probably doable.
In WFRP, three Goblins are a worthy challenge to a starting group. Six Goblins could easily TPK them and ten Goblins they had better RUN!
You'll fairly rapidly get the hang of what constitutes a good combat encounter for your group. And that's another thing: It's going to vary more from group to group in WFRP than in D&D. The classes in D&D have the underlying assumption that, no matter what, you'll be at least somewhat effective in combat. This is much less true in WFRP. Yes, the Mercenary in the party is going to do just fine in Melee. The Halfling Scribe is NOT.
As a result, you need to pay close attention to the roleplaying encounters/puzzle solving aspects of the game. If you read through the published adventures very much you'll notice a trend that they're heavy on the mystery and corruption themes. This gives the less combat oriented party members a chance to use their skills at perception, sneaking, knowlege and reading obscure languages.
And having things focused less on combat can also be a good thing if you want your PC's to survive for long too. The WFRP combat system can be DEADLY. The thing that makes it so deadly (in my opinion) is that it is subject to very easy reversals of fortune. Because 1 in 10 hits results in an "Ulrick's Fury" (kinda like a crit in D&D) you can easily have a situation where that beefy warrior type character is suddenly down to his last couple Wounds. The characters effective "hit points" do not rise in nearly the same fashion as in D&D so the challenges can escallate much more gradually than in D&D.
Another thing that rises VERY gradually compared to D&D is loot. Some of the starting careers begin with some hilariously lean belongings (gotta love the "cart and 3 sacks" that the Bone Picker starts with!). But this is a great feature of the system in my opinion. When was the last time your D&D group was thrilled about finding a simple chain shirt? And finding ANYTHING magical at all in WFRP is a red-letter day.
All this stuff I've typed so far is more general comparison between systems and pointing out a few potential pitfalls for the starting GM. You were asking about adventures and there I can't offer a whole lot of help. I'm more of a homebrew guy and in fact I'm basically chucking the whole "Old World" setting for my campaign by placing it in a fantasy version of the Caribbean for a Pirate themed game. However I have read the adventure included in the book and I think it makes for a good kickoff/intro game.
I don't know how hard it is going to be to sell your players on the game. If you think it's going to be tough then I'd recommend that you have them create characters first and then use what you know about them to tailor any adventure (whether purchased, downloaded or homebrewed) to their particular skills and tendencies. That will help ensure that even the Rat Catcher and Charcoal Burner PC's are able to contribute in a meaningful way.
That brings me to a quick final point about House Rules. I tend to like the group to be a little more balanced than the random career generation can sometimes lead to. If you've got a Noble, a Marine, an Apprentice Wizard and a Camp Follower as your starting PC's then the Camp Follower might feel a little useless (especially in combat). What the GM in our last campaign did was to cull out all the more "glamourous" and combat focused careers from the list and have the PC's randomly roll from the more "peasantlike" leftovers. That insured that we'd all start from humble beginnings and work our way up to being heroes. It was great fun and I've retained that practice in my current campaign.
I wish you luck with what I feel is a very fun system. Feel free to respond or e-mail me with any other questions. I'm always happy to talk about WFRP.
It's funny, the gaming group I've got now sort of got together back in college and the first time we ever played a game together it was WFRP. So we've kinda come full circle. We finished up our first WFRP2 campaign just before Christmas and now I'm back in the GM chair starting tonight to run my first full blown WFRP2 campaign. I'm totally psyched about it!
The thing about WFRP is that it is similar enough to D&D in terms of mechanics for the players to pick up fairly quickly. But they can't let that fool them into thinking it's exactly the same. And you as the GM especially can't fall into that mindset. As a real quick example, three Goblins are something that even a first level party in D&D is going to brush aside fairly easily. Six Goblins are enough to show some concern over. Ten Goblins are a pretty tough challenge but probably doable.
In WFRP, three Goblins are a worthy challenge to a starting group. Six Goblins could easily TPK them and ten Goblins they had better RUN!
You'll fairly rapidly get the hang of what constitutes a good combat encounter for your group. And that's another thing: It's going to vary more from group to group in WFRP than in D&D. The classes in D&D have the underlying assumption that, no matter what, you'll be at least somewhat effective in combat. This is much less true in WFRP. Yes, the Mercenary in the party is going to do just fine in Melee. The Halfling Scribe is NOT.
As a result, you need to pay close attention to the roleplaying encounters/puzzle solving aspects of the game. If you read through the published adventures very much you'll notice a trend that they're heavy on the mystery and corruption themes. This gives the less combat oriented party members a chance to use their skills at perception, sneaking, knowlege and reading obscure languages.
And having things focused less on combat can also be a good thing if you want your PC's to survive for long too. The WFRP combat system can be DEADLY. The thing that makes it so deadly (in my opinion) is that it is subject to very easy reversals of fortune. Because 1 in 10 hits results in an "Ulrick's Fury" (kinda like a crit in D&D) you can easily have a situation where that beefy warrior type character is suddenly down to his last couple Wounds. The characters effective "hit points" do not rise in nearly the same fashion as in D&D so the challenges can escallate much more gradually than in D&D.
Another thing that rises VERY gradually compared to D&D is loot. Some of the starting careers begin with some hilariously lean belongings (gotta love the "cart and 3 sacks" that the Bone Picker starts with!). But this is a great feature of the system in my opinion. When was the last time your D&D group was thrilled about finding a simple chain shirt? And finding ANYTHING magical at all in WFRP is a red-letter day.
All this stuff I've typed so far is more general comparison between systems and pointing out a few potential pitfalls for the starting GM. You were asking about adventures and there I can't offer a whole lot of help. I'm more of a homebrew guy and in fact I'm basically chucking the whole "Old World" setting for my campaign by placing it in a fantasy version of the Caribbean for a Pirate themed game. However I have read the adventure included in the book and I think it makes for a good kickoff/intro game.
I don't know how hard it is going to be to sell your players on the game. If you think it's going to be tough then I'd recommend that you have them create characters first and then use what you know about them to tailor any adventure (whether purchased, downloaded or homebrewed) to their particular skills and tendencies. That will help ensure that even the Rat Catcher and Charcoal Burner PC's are able to contribute in a meaningful way.
That brings me to a quick final point about House Rules. I tend to like the group to be a little more balanced than the random career generation can sometimes lead to. If you've got a Noble, a Marine, an Apprentice Wizard and a Camp Follower as your starting PC's then the Camp Follower might feel a little useless (especially in combat). What the GM in our last campaign did was to cull out all the more "glamourous" and combat focused careers from the list and have the PC's randomly roll from the more "peasantlike" leftovers. That insured that we'd all start from humble beginnings and work our way up to being heroes. It was great fun and I've retained that practice in my current campaign.
I wish you luck with what I feel is a very fun system. Feel free to respond or e-mail me with any other questions. I'm always happy to talk about WFRP.
