Adapting WFRP

 

If I were to run WFRPG, there are some changes I need to make to the game. As it is, prepping for the game would look much like prepping for 5e. As I am on the record saying, I don't have the time or creative energy to keep that kind of game running for long.

Default Goal

Instead, I'm trying to utilize the Alexandrian's advice and utilize a Default Goal and Default Action. WFRPG is a more brutal game, but also a seemingly more political one. Fortunately, I've come to realize that simply by prepping situations instead of plots, politics tend to work their way into player's lives by themselves.

I may be overthinking things, but I would like to have a suitable mega-dungeon or area to explore for players, perhaps in a West Marches style (or the Border Princes in this case), which allows player agency and allows me minimal prep. It doesn't have to be a mega dungeon, but something that lets me have recursive or reusable content is ideal. Exploration is really fun.

Player Agency

The written adventures, as far as I can tell, are mostly railroads. I'll have to read some of them to be sure, but once I pick through them, I should be able to turn them into situations, put the story progression on a calendar, and have the players take the reigns. I find D&D is best when there isn't some world-ending disaster looming on the horizon, but the occasional city-wide-threat might be suitable. Here's a quick list off the top of my head.

• Beastmen have been multiplying in the nearby woods. Their presence is a threat to the city and surrounding villages.
• There was an attempt on the life of the mayor. Find out who did it.
• There was a great flash of light coming from the Grey Mountains three days ago. Many groups of adventurers went to investigate, but none have returned.
• An entire mining operation has gone bust in the mountains near Ubersreik. Folk say they turned up warpstone.

These are all pretty standard plot hooks, but they wouldn't be hard to flesh out with proper random travel tables and random encounter tables. A notice board or commanding officer could provide quests that I could roll up randomly as prep before sessions.

XP Clarity

Something else I would like to change is to give players clear pathways to earn XP: They would personal character goals, party goals, and then quest goals. Completing a step of a quest, or the whole thing, would give the party XP. This is very clear and non-hand-wavy on the part of the DM, which I prefer: Players need to be able to make informed decisions regarding how they progress, so I would err on the side of transparency.

Note that players are responsible for establishing their own short- and long-term goals. I plan on working with the players to create a list of things to earn extra XP. Blades and the Dark does something like this with a checklist that is evaluated after each session. However, I would give that checklist to another player, to watch one other player during a session, and tracking XP accomplishments thusly. This way I don't have to track it myself, and I wouldn't have to worry about a player awarding themselves XP. This is possible to abuse if players work together and simply award each other maximum XP, but I would always have the option to veto if the situation were contentious.

As a side note, I must comment on how, with this system, players do not receive XP for combat or treasure. With the lethality of combat being how it is, players are highly motivated to stay the hell out of fights. Or at least the fair ones.

Real Time Events

I've had tremendous success with tracking a calendar of events in my Dwimmermount campaign; it's butt-simple to create a calendar and then have events transpire as time goes by. I would like to apply this idea to a WFRPG game, complete with time passing in real time when we're not at the table.

My question is, with the density of cities and settlements in this game, should I have events localized to specific regions or cities? The background lore and politics can be very intense. With my goal of doing less prep, what's the optimal way to do this? I suppose I would need to play the game and see, but it doesn't necessarily have to be complicated, any more than the stuff I was doing in Dwimmermount: This city has a diplomatic visit to this city, etc. For more detailed stuff, I could literally have a random table of city and political events if and when players are visiting said city. Otherwise, I can focus the key events and outcomes to the more populous places.

Because of my experience with Dwimmermount, I want to develop a better way of tracking individual events. Instead of having a calendar with events for different things spread thinly over a whole year, I would compile all events for one city into one place. For instance, a list with dates and their corresponding event, able to fit on a post-it note.

• September 4: Yethlyreom leadership visits Adamas
• September 23: Adamas contracts plague
• October 4: Adamas king dies
• October 23: Yethlyreom invades Adamas
• November 7: Yethlyreom rules Adamas

If I were managing lots of little city states, or even just a small region, this technique might be more useful. I'd have to test and see.