Thoughts on Running WFRP

 

How can someone expect to run a game with such a robust and well-known world, such as WFRPG? There are a lot of moving parts. Here are my thoughts.

A lot of the concepts in WFRP 4e are broad. Yes, we can learn about what industry is the most important in such-and-such region, but that doesn’t tell you exactly what’s going on with the mayor and his daughter.

I can make up a lot of timeline stuff that keeps things moving forward. Some players would exploit meta-knowledge of the setting to go searching for key NPCs and locations. How can I stop this?

1. Choose an adventure location about which very little is known (i.e. the Border Princes).
2. Tell the players that everything they have read in the books constitutes glorified rumors and commonly-accepted hear say. This gives the GM the flexibility to play in an “alternate universe” where the history is not known, and anything can happen. In fact, start with the execution of Karl Franz and take it from there.
3. We don’t know how much time passed between the time of the last “stable” published timeline and the End Times. This period could have been multiple years long, if not decades.
4. Treat the world with the caution you would if the players were playing themselves in their home town. They will utilize every edge and leverage everything to get an edge in the game. If you can anticipate this, you can circumvent them. They want to travel to the exact location of a known, powerful wizard? They may narrow things down to a few miles of his tower, but they’ll never find it if they don’t have the proper spells. Also note that a great deal of the lore of the setting relates to the biggest and most notable characters of the setting. In a typical game, they are unlikely to interact with any of these characters, just as in real life we’re unlikely to interact with the President of the United States, let alone a senator, governor or even mayor. Our lives are about the people in our communities.

What’s the worst-case scenario if a player were to exploit their meta-knowledge of the setting? They can’t afford to hire, rent or buy anything from these people, let alone intimidate or bribe them. What does that leave? The location of secret places? NPCs with hidden identities? All of these claims can be invalidated by the GM with this explanation: If I feel your knowledge of the setting is being abused, that knowledge is instantly invalidated, and altered to no longer be accurate. Watch out, meta-gamers.

It was entirely possible to play the Star Wars RPG without even a hint of the characters from the movies. In fact, the combined awareness of the license was a boon to the game; collectively, everyone had a clear image of what everything looked like, and how the economics and social dynamics of the setting worked. In Warhammer, I expect exactly one player to have any prior knowledge of the setting, and the rest to be bumping along like any other normal D&D player. In my latest game, I never gave the players lore information unless they asked for it, and I would do the same thing here.