Sigh. I can't do Warhammer. How's about Iron Kingdoms?

[Khairn]

I've GM'ed Witchfire on a couple of occasions and never had a complaint from any of the players. They loved the epic nature of the events in the story and were caught up in it from the very beginning. There were 2 places in the trilogy where I used some good old fashioned GM fudging to help things turn out right, but hell, that needs to be done with almost any module if you try to run it solely "as written".

The setting is amazing with an extremely well written and immersive setting, lots of fantastic support on line, and in a regularly published magazine. In over 25 years of gaming I've never found a setting that was perfect. But IK is about as close as I've ever seen.

 

[Arrgh! Mark!]

The issue I personally have with Witchfire is basically that there isn't much of the Iron Kingdoms in them.


Spoilers -



The feel I had of the IK setting is basically how the Five Fingers describes itself. There's three plots. Political intrigue, Dark magic/horror, and crime. What IK does well is that it interlinks those in a way that creates quite a nice opportunity for adventure. Witchfire does not do this.

IK doesn't have a great ability to be scrabbling around in dungeons simply due to its setting. Not to say that is impossible, its just unlikely; there's better ways of making gold than that. Witchfire has some nice looking but boring playing (Second adventure, anyone?) dungeons, one after the other, where the "game" happens - and basically thats it. These "game" moments often have parts where the GM is required to keep certain NPC's alive despite the PC's best efforts, which makes cut scenes. In between you scrabble around swamps and do a bit of entirely uninteresting detective work. You basically walk the only path available to you, which happens to have some encounters on it.

Not to say the opportunity isn't there to make a good adventure. But that isn't what is written down.

In my opinion, Witchfire just doesn't scream IK to me. The collected edition (which I bought upon recommendation... of a person I no longer listen to) has two unrelated adventures in its collection which are both entirely more interesting and scream IK to me - and they are by no means that great.

And the dungeons are just kind of boring. If you want dungeons, buy Shackled City or something.

 

[Gothmog]

So after you folks sold me on Warhammer FRP 2e, I ran out and bought the core book. Love it. Problem? My group is all "meh" about me running it for them. Reason? "We want D&D 3.5!" Fools. So I'll tuck Warhammer away on my shelf for the future.

[This is the one damn thing that frustrates me about cool non-D&D 3.5 games. Too hard to get people to play. At least in my experience.]

However, a buddy of mine (not in my group) suggested I should pick up Iron Kingdoms, about which I know very little,other than it's "D&D with steam and gunpowder."

I'd love to know more about it; it seems appealing, what little I've seen.

So, Iron Kingdoms 3.5--sell me on it. Begin.

Wow, I'm sorry- that really sucks. WHFRP2 is an awesome game, and I've known some people who were system nazis- they refuse to play or try anything out of their comfort zone.

However, you need to remember something else too. If you're really psyched and amped about running a particular game and/or campaign, but your players aren't as interested, you'll be doing yourself and them a disservice by playing something you're not really into. Your passion for the game and setting WILL come through in your sessions, and I've seen players who were lukewarm or slightly hostile to a given game or setting come around to really enjoy it once the DM ran a sample adventure in that system. The more excited and animated you are during a session, and the deeper you get into the session, the more the players will also get into it. Pitch the idea to them of running a one-shot WHFRP2 game with pregen characters with one of the 50 or so free adventures on the Black Industries website. Doing that is exactly how I got my group of D&D 3.5 diehards to LOVE WHFRP2 and pretty much drop D&D in preference of WHFRP (once every 4 weeks one guy runs a one-off D&D campaign that is light-hearted hack-n-slash). And yes, WHFRP2 really is that damn good (especially if you like dark fantasy, horror, and Lovecraftian elements in your games).

If not, the IK stuff is pretty good. The setting doesn't grab me as much as the Old World does, but it does have some cool elements. At the very minimum, you'll need the character and campaign guides, and probably the Monsternomicon. As others have mentioned, the mechanics in the character guide are REALLY wonky, so beware that.

 

[Stormborn]

To be more specific on my objections to the Witchfire Trilogy:

-Its a bad introduction to IK. It was written what seems like eons before the core books were printed back when all you had was the original Monsternomicom nad Lock 'a Load, a character primer to the IK. I dont have the collection, but the original had a line in the descriptive text that was something like "a hole about the size of a halfling" - even though there are no halflings in the setting.

-Its a railroad. I am one of those people that dont think there is really any problems with railroads so long as either a) the players do not realize it or b) the players are having so much fun they don't care. Neither of these is true of the Witchfire. It went from very frustrating to the players - with the equivalent of cut scenes where nothing they did would effect the out come - to very boring.

- A lot of people say 'it can be fixed'. That is true, but honestly with the amount of 'fixing' you have to do you might as well get a summary of the adventure and fill in everything else yourself.

I'm glad somepeople have made it work for them, I just know of too many people who haven't been able to do that. In some case that adventure even turned them off the IK by itself. There are a lot of better starting points.

 

[Chainsaw Mage]

It's the Amtrack of currently published D&D adventures. The scenery is beautiful, but you're locked into a pre-determined travel route.

Does railroady necessarily mean "not fun", though?

 

[Chainsaw Mage]

Pitch the idea to them of running a one-shot WHFRP2 game with pregen characters with one of the 50 or so free adventures on the Black Industries website. Doing that is exactly how I got my group of D&D 3.5 diehards to LOVE WHFRP2 and pretty much drop D&D in preference of WHFRP (once every 4 weeks one guy runs a one-off D&D campaign that is light-hearted hack-n-slash). And yes, WHFRP2 really is that damn good (especially if you like dark fantasy, horror, and Lovecraftian elements in your games).

Awesome. You (and a couple of other other posters here too) have convinced me to give the "one shot salespitch" a try. We'll see how it goes . . . with work being busy lately, I've barely had time to scan the WHFRP book!

 

[jdrakeh]

Does railroady necessarily mean "not fun", though?

It depends on whether you like being spoonfed adventure, or not. For me, it's horribly unfun. For others, it might be better than sex. It all comes down to what you like personally. If you enjoy your in-character actions not having any great significance past what the adventure dictates, you probably won't have any issue with Witchfire.

 

[Karl Green]

I'm curious, what is the general consensus on the Witchfire Trilogy? It sounds like quite a few people don't care for it. The criticism I've heard in the past is that it's got some railroad-y elements to it.

While I like the basic idea of the Witchfire trilogy it is VERY railroady... and also there is very little arcane mechanika devices... everyone and their dog has a magic sword or armor or cloak and/or ring of this and that... no mechanika (except for in part of part 2 when you find a bit HUGE mechanika building ). Now part of the reason for this is they wrote the 3 -basic arcs before (like by 3 years) Character Guild and put forth the idea that normal magic was rare and that mechanika was much more common. When they updated the game for 3.5 and combined it with the Trilogy I really think they missed the mark by not updating it with mechanika stuff also.

 

[mhensley]

Try this-

Running D&D like Warhammer

 

[mhensley]

Does railroady necessarily mean "not fun", though?

In this case it does. I just finished being a player in these modules and there are several fights in which the pc's have ZERO chance of beating the bad guys. Winning was totally dependent upon uber-npc's coming to save the day. I have a good group, so we did have fun, but this is not a good adventure.