Well, if everything goes according to plan we'll have three PC's rolling up characters tomorrow and will go through "A day late..." and see if we can also get through "An eye for..."  If that goes well I'll be converting some previous edition one-shot adventures for us to do some more adventuring.  I expect that our group will grow to 4-5 PC's and hope that W3 will become a frequent secondary game to go along with our D4 campaign.  Wish us luck!

Mark

Good luck Mark, let us know how it ges!

Hi all,

Ok, so we had our first game last night.  Short version of how it went = lots of fun and we'll be continuing to play.  Long version below...

We played from 4p-915p with me GMing and 4 players.  Character creation took about half that time but there was plenty of rules explanation, fleshing out character backgrounds and eating going on at the same time.  One of my players suggested that everyone decide on race in secret then get their three character cards to choose from and then announce what they were going with.  Everyone liked this a lot and we ended up with two Reiklanders (a brother team consisting of a Coachman and Burgher, the characters are brothers, not the players) and two High Elves (a female soldier and a male bounty hunter, we talked about them being siblings but I don't think it was ever settled).  The coachman and burgher have dreams of starting a brewery and being competetive against dwarven brewers so we already have a side-story built in to almost anything we do.  They went with the Brash Young Fools party card which seems to suit the group just fine.  We're sort of building a backstory for the elves on why they are hanging around two somewhat rowdy human brothers that enjoy brewing beer as much as adventuring but there's more work to do there.

Once done with characters we played through "A day late..." and while I know we did some things wrong or forgot some things here and there (all fo us being new to the system that doesn't surprise me at all) we all had a good time.  Watching the players pick their actions and building their dice pools I'd say that deciding on actions and resolving them went as quickly as oru D4 games go.  Let me explain that a bit.  We've been playing D4 for 18 months now and all like it for what it is, Diablo with Dice as one of my co-DMs puts it.  Each turn/action is an exercise in math where we're calculating lots and lots of to hit and damage bonuses for every character.  It was refreshing to have one die roll resolve all of those things.  We still walked through the creation of each dice pool but it still went more quickly than individual D4 player turns and I suspect it will only speed up from there.  I have two of the core sets (minus one set of books that I sold to one of our players) and the Adventurer's expansion and think that there's nothing that's required for my players to buy, but it would certainly help if each player had a set of dice to themselves.  Total investment per player of about $12 so that would not be bad.

Combat went quickly and I don't think any of them went past 2-3 rounds.  I don't know if that's common, quick combats, so we'll have to see if that plays out.  If so, it makes the longer recharge action cards essentially equal to "encounter" powers from D4.  As a GM I think the only thing that I didn't like was the monster entries.  I hate the stat lines (just put Damage, Soak and Defense there for goodness sake).  If it's ok to leave some stats without a title and in parenthesis then just do it to all of them.  Sheesh, just put three more little column headers on there and I would be much happier.  Also, not having the monster actions on cards was something I didn't like.  I can (and will) make my own but it was just an annoyance.  Also, as a GM I found the monster section to be very thin.  I suspect that mid-high level supplements will see the release of new monsters but it just seemed way too thin to me right off the bat.

I had to adjust the hook from "A day late..." to fit our party but that was not a problem.  I suspect that converting some old 1-shot adventures will also work out well.  The party sheet didn't see much use, but I did toss a stress token on there when the female high elf soldier charged into the beastmen that were attacking the wagon and all of the brave males stayed back.  When the second group emerged from the woods by them she got some satisfaction as the burgher screamed out for help. 

All in all, it was very FUN and that's the biggest thing for us.  It was an good night of gaming and the system is one that should work well for us once we get all of the little bits that are strewn around four different rulebooks all in our heads.  Other than the monster section being thin my only real complaint is the format of the books, but that's really nothing new on the forums here and is something that's being addressed with the living index.  We'll be moving on to "An eye for..." next.

Later,

Mark

The line of the night may have been when I was explaining after the first fight that if they had left the Gor unmolested for several rounds that it would have killed the guy lying on the ground.  To which one player replied, "Well it's good that I molested him right away."  :P

Mark

A nice write-up, thanks for the report. :)

I'm looking to begin my own campaign with workmates (from a new job) over the next couple of weeks and will be running the exact same route of day late -> eye for an eye. If you have any tips/suggestions/workarounds on specifics of either I'd certainly be interested in them.

As a player in Mark's group I can say we all laughed and had a good time. I (and most of the others) have played the older WFRP rules sets, so when the beastmen showed up, I had a fit of deja vu....a good feeling! The artwork and the rules of the new version support the feel of the old world, so I am happy with that. When Mark asked if anyone was interested in playing again this coming weekend, I said yes right away (but my wife groaned, so may Sigmar protect me!)

My only complaint was the lack of horses. My character conception was to be (eventually) a mounted 'reiter' with an xbow and, as I gained enough cash, a pair of pistols for close in fighting. Consequently, I specialized in mounted combat only to find there are no rules for purchasing horses yet. Thankfully, Mark is looking for a solution and has found some ideas on this forum. My interim plan is to come up with a background that explains my lack of a horse while having mounted skills :-)

I plan on adding horses to my equipment list.

Ah, tonight we start "An eye for..."

I'll post about how it goes after we're done.

Mark

Ok, so we finished "An eye for..." last Saturday and I wanted to post a short synopsis of our game. 

We started by spending the XP that was earned in the previous adventure and adjusting characters.  I allowed each player to adjust pretty much anything they wanted (just this once though) since we were all learning the game last time we sat down and some people might not have been as happy with all of their choices as they'd have liked.  There were very minor changes made and the party makeup (HE Bounty Hunter, HE Soldier, HR Burgher and HR Roadwarden) remained the same.  We advanced the side storyline of the humans wanting to start a brewery a little bit but then got down to the adventure.

We had a bit of RP to get them hired and then the travel that got us to the beastman fight.  I made better use of active defenses for the monsters this time so the fight was a bit more challenging and ended up with one fairly badly hurt HE and one moderately hurt HE.  After finishing off the beastmen we got to all learn and apply the first aid rules since the Burgher is skilled and nobody really wanted to take their chances in the Hospice.  I found that kind of odd, but they viewed it as a place to go and die, and they never ventured back there during the investigation portion later on so there were several clues that were missed there. 

The investigation went well, very well I think, and each of the four split up and went to check things out.  I liked the shift from combat to more rp and think that they did, too.  Good clues were found in sevearl places (forge, library, sitting room) and we also had some more opportunity to flesh out a biut of our backstory when the Burgher worked out a deal to supply the manor with the ale that they are brewing.  The hammer was found but its relevance was not discovered so it was left behind and we moved on with investigations (the HE Bounty Hunter found the painting and picked up a temp insanity but didn't have time to tell the others or was just jibber-jabbering to himself so much that nothing was said about it) and then on to dinner.  Both RH ate the poisoned food but only one was affected by it.  A big fight with the cultists ensued that night and Greigor was killed by the end of the first round IIRC.  It was a good, blood fight and I decided to use zero henchmen.  All of the cultists used regular cultist stats.  I'm still trying to balance things for combats and was put off a bit by how wimpy one 'real' monster and a bunch of henchmen were in our previous game so I said, "full speed ahead" and hit them with all 'real' monsters.  Ok, so they were cultists so not too tough but one HE nearly got knocked out and the other was pretty hurt, too.

Since they stopped the demon summoning they didn't have to fight it (probably lucky for them in their somewhat weakened state) and I awarded them a second XP because they not only headed off the demon coming into play but they also saved the sacrificial victim and all did some good rp'ing and helped advance our side storyline.

As the GM I noticed that even after reading the adventure more than a couple of times I still felt less prepared than I wanted to.  I felt like I was flipping around the module more than I'd like (or normally do) but I'll say that some of that was still a bit of unfamiliarity.  Maybe it's also because I could not flip through it like an old D&D module and felt kind of constrained (physically) because it was part of one of the rulebooks, which I also needed to reference.  Now that we're on to other adventures I think that this slight feeling of being uncomfortable will ease up.  Anyway, I had a good time and everyone at the end said that they are still having a good time and were already starting to plan how to work towards finishing careers and what they might want to move into next.

Later,

Mark

Thanks for the update, and I'd love to keep hearing more.  This is one of the first session reports I've seen for Warhammer 3E.

I'll definitely try to update here after each of our games. 

mark

Hi again all,

We had our third session last night and I just wanted to post a report to go along with the previous ones.

If you're going to be a player in The Ghost of Mondstille you don't want to read this since it contains spoilers.

Short Recap = Played Ghost of Mondstille and all had fun!

Long Recap = We had just three PCs (Human Coachman, Human Burgher, High Elf Bounty Hunter) as our HE Soldier and Dwarf Smuggler could not make it.  We recapped what happened at the end of An Eye for an Eye where the PCs stayed on at the manor to help our since much of the staff had been decimated.  They ended up staying on there for a few months and winter had settled in when they started to return to Ubersriek.  On the way there their wagon broke a wheel and a full keg of beer (the humans are brothers that are aspiring brewers and have already set up a deal with Lord Ashafenberger) fell off the wagon and cracked open spilling into the snow.  Between the anger over spilled beer and suddlenty getting an idea about beer-slushies an arrow fewl out of the woods and stuck into the wagon.  Everyone dove for cover and then saw that the arrow had a red kerchief tied to it.  After looking around a bit they spotted Roland (renamed from Rutger because they had already met someone named Rutger) in the woods signalling to them to keep quiet.  After a few minutes he jioned the party and together they saw a large (30+ group of goblins in the woods where a goblin shaman was scraeming and yelling at the rest.  They were able to figure out that the band was under the control of an orc named Killahead and the shaman was really, really mad at another goblin called puss.  So mad, in fact, that he ordered other goblins to find him so he could be killed and eaten by the Shaman.

Roland explained the PCs needed a place to stay and he ran a guesthouse in a nearby very small mining town.  They went and found the rest of the small town mostly deserted (I added a drunk who ran the bar to still be in town but to be of no use to the party) and they settled in.  The kids quickly started asking them questions and being wide-eyed with wonder and asking if the party saw the witch in the woods on their way here (it's just a story that Matilda tells the kids to keep them from venturing too far into the woods).  PCs got settled with the Burgher taking a private room and the elf and Coachmen in the common room.  The humans took a nap and the elf got the first haunting.  He's already in a semi-fragile state from viewing the painting back at the manor so the cold chill moving through him made him want to leave right then.  During dinner there was the second haunting and not too much was made of it.  During the night the third haunting was in the Burgher's room but he was convinced that it was his brother playing a prank on him so he went back to sleep.  The Coachman was awakened by the sound of breaking glass downstairs and went to investigate. He had no weapons with him so he picked up the metal fireplace poker and carefully crept into the kitchen.  There he found Puss (renamed from Puceheart in the module only because I thought Puss was a good goblin name) rummaging through the cabinets.  Puss sprang up with eyes as big as saucers holding some stewed rabbit on one hand and a pot in the other, saying (I had the golbins speaking a very broken version of common sort of like Pikey from the movie Snatch!) "It's not what it looks like, ok so maybe it is what it looks like, I can explain, I ran away from my tribe and..." The coachman just stood there in wonder for a minute (stunned for a round) and Puss could tell that he probably wasn't buying it so he broke for the window and got away.  Roland was notified of the break-in and went to fix the window and then they saw the writing on the wall and Roland quickly said he would clean it up and then back to bed for everyone.

The next morning Roland and the party went to patrol the village since goblins of Killahead's band had obviously gotten closer than desired.  They found several in the closed-down (for winter) smithy's and a blunderbuss in an enclosed space with a crit that has a 5 severity just painted the place in goblin parts.  They fought and killed a few more goblins and returned to the guesthouse.  Upon returning the elf saw the next haunting (oh, his poor psyche is starting to unravel now) and Matilda got really upset at the burned picture and started to blame it on the elf and then the kids were screaming upstairs at the next haunting.  Kids run downstairs, adults run upstairs to investigate and find Josef's room a mess.  While talking and investigating a bit the Burgher looks out the window and sees the kids running towards the mine and alerts Roland who immediately heads off to fetch them because during the winter months he knows that sometimes orcs find refuge in there.  The party follows him, but the Burgher finds Josef's will in the mess but can't do anything with it right now.  I threw the orcs in there to have another combat and had to back off a bit with them because orcs are tough.  I mean TOUGH!  Roland went down, the Burgher went down, the Coachman was nearly down and the elf was halfway down before they won the combat.  It was overly tough but that was my mistake as a GM so I didn't feel bad about giving them a break.  If there's anything I don't like about the system it's the monster rating and really being at a loos to really be able to build balanced encounters.  Maybe I just need more time with it.  So, the party is beat to heck and they find the kids hiding in a mining cart and carry the unconscious ones back to the house for rest and healing.

They find out the whole story about Anthea and end up allowing her and the family to live (which I am very happy about as a GM!) and after getting healed up they head back to Ubersriek and don't say a word about what happened there to anyone. The game was a lot of fun and my compliments go to Clive Oldfield for writing such a fun adventure!  As a GM it was very easy to follow and run.  I did add a little more combat, though. 

Mark

Thanks for posting. Its really fun to read.

Mark Theurer said:

Cool,  thanks.

That's the first time I've ever seen an actual play of one of my adventures wirtten up like that, so that's very gratifying.

Hi all,

We played our 4th session this past weekend and here’s how it went…

We had planned on 5 players, but two could not make it so we soldiered on with 3 (Elf Soldier, Elf Bounty Hunter and Dwarf Smuggler). Our two humans (brothers Otto and Hidro Matik) were missing but since they are aspiring brewmasters we figured that they were busy having many test samples of their latest ale.

The party was joined by Bill (Wild Bill) Bruhamer (Dwarf Smuggler) who has had his name written in his clan’s Book of Grudges because he shared dwarven brewing secrets with non-Dwarves. He has since hooked up with the Matik brothers and is helping them carve out a niche as a micro-brewery in Ubersriek.

This adventure cobbles together aspects from, at least, three different sources so none of it’s really original except that I’ve stitched them all into one adventure. The Matik’s have been in communication with Benito and Eleora Sangeovesi (owners of Il Toro Russo restaurant) in Stormdorf who are interested in bringing large quantities of their brew to be sold in their restaurant. It seems that the brothers’ brew has gained a bit of notoriety since they have been filling orders for Lord Ashafenberg. So, with the brothers busy the rest of the party plans to meet employee’s of Il Toro Russo at the docks and take a barge to Stormdorf. A barge that’s weighed down with many kegs of ale.

Along the way the barge springs a large leak and the crew have to make for shore quickly. While they are making repairs, which take well over a day, the party wanders around a bit and in the far, far distance they see a humanoid shape that looks like it’s waving to them and trying to get their attention. It even appears that a tree is pulled right out of the ground and set on fire to try to get their attention. They notice that they seem to have too good of a look at the humanoid for how far away it is and then figure out it’s a giant. By the time this happens they are too far to get away but the giant doesn’t seem to be threatening them. Rather, he’s trying to wave them down and get them to talk to him. Normally, a dwarf would expect a giant to charge right in and try to play whack-a-dwarf but the giant is trying not to make eye contact with the dwarf and is mainly talking to the elves. Talking, that is, in very small sentences that consist mainly of single syllable words. It seems that the giant’s cave has been overrun with goblins but they are back in the small tunnels that he cannot reach so he’s pleading with the party to help get rid of them. After a bit of negotiation the giant offers to reward the party with all the horse meat that they can carry and we’re off goblin hunting. There were two battles with the small greenskins and the first went badly for the party. In the first the Elf Soldier (played by Judy, the elf known as Nancy) charged into a large group of snotlings and gobos and was pulled down under a green tide and was KO’d pretty early on. In the second fight the party found a goblin shaman ranting and raving as he ran around another group of goblins. He was carrying a dead chicken and was getting blood all over the place. They also noticed another goblin that was sitting by their camp fire who was sitting on a large bucket that he was desperately trying to keep under control. It seemed like there was something in the bucket that wanted to get out. Our Elf Bounty Hunter took out the shaman quickly at range and then all hell broke loose. Another green tide was threatening the party until the one that was sitting on the bucket was killed. He fell over and an imp flew around the large cave, now free from his confines. Without the shaman there to offer moral support and control the imp, the goblins scattered and the party cleared out the caves.

I introduces two magic items in this adventure and both were found in the caves. The first is a ring that gives the wearer an extra fortune dice each day (so 4 instead of 3). I don’t think this is too powerful and in our games it’s typical that the party gets into really hot water in the last fight of the session and burns all of their extra fortune dice then. The second is a human-forged sword, but one that they discovered was held by humans that were drawn in with the Vampire Counts of Sylvania. It’s a longsword that has a pomell that’s designed to look like a dragon claw. It allows a complete reroll of a melee attack dice pool once per day. I think this one is considerably more powerful than the ring, but not overly so. The giant was happy that they cleared out the goblins and offered to help carry all of their horse meat back to the barge but they instead bargained with him and traded him back the horse meat in exchange for a favor if they ever cross paths again.

OK, so they get to Stormdorf and exchange pleasantries with Benito, Eleora and Benito’s brother Guido. Il Toro Russo is a Tilean restaurant in a section of town that’s known as Little Tilea. They are introduced to the restaurant’s head chef, a Halfling named King William Hildebrant the 56th. Benito remarks that it’s not his real name and that the Halfling is quite insane and delusional but he’s one heck of a cook. Not as good as Benito’s dearly departed mother, but still quite excellent. During dinner, with lots of drinking, there is suddenly a lot of commotion coming from the basement. Two more Tileans come running from the basement, totally out of breath. They are introduced as Mario and Luigi and explain that in their explorations of the sewers under Stormdorf they have stumbled upon Skaven tunnels. Benito shoo’s them off since we are still in the middle of dinner, though. Further discussions reveal that Benito and Guido are interested in financing a brewery for the brother’s here in Stormdorf and they also need to request the help of the elves and dwarf. It seems that Benito knows, but does not have sufficient evidence (none, really) that his mother’s prized cookbook that contains all of her personal recipes has been stolen by another local businessman. Werdna, a human that fancies himself as an herbalist / barber / epicurean / chef (and rumored to be a sorcerer of the dark arts) has a shop on the other end of town and he has stolen it to make use of the recipes himself. Benito asks the party to break in and steal it back for him.

Wanting to assist their new business partner (not really like, “I have an offer you can’t refuse”, but not totally unlike it either) they scout out the shop and find a young human woman tending to the shop but Werdna is nowhere to be found. They find all sorts of herbs, foodstuffs, cookery and even clockwork toys, but nothing incriminating yet. They come back in the middle of the night and break in to find the book. The ground floor is just a shop (but with lots of expensive herbs and other goods) so they head upstairs and find Werdna’s personal library and his bed chamber. In the library they are attacked by animated clockwork toys and they find lots of expensive stuff (some of questionable, but not outrightly heretical, nature) but no “Mama’s cookbook” so they head into the basement. Here they find Werdna’s private kitchen. There’s a main room with an over, a pantry, and a locked door. The whole place is a mess with flour and food strewn all over the place along with lots of what appears to be blood everywhere. There’s also a female, the clerk from earlier, slumped by the stove. While she’s being looked at (she’s nearly dead, but utters, “Is it still here?”) and while the party is wondering what “it” is a huge humanoid shape emerges from the pantry and attacks them. It’s quite dark but with their better-than-human eyesight the party can make out that the creature is bulky, large, about the size of an ogre, and is quite rounded. A good fight ensues where, at least a couple of times, the Elf Soldier is vomited on my great steaming gouts of what they can only think of as marinara sauce. They kill the creature and decide that it was some kind of horrific calzone golem. After the fight they find that the clerk has died of her wounds. They break into the locked room and find the cookbook and a HUGE oven. The one used to bake the calzone golem, no doubt!

Knowing that they probably cannot explain to the city watch why they are in a basement kitchen with a dead girl and several hundred pounds of calzone they beat a hasty retreat to Il Toro Russo. Mama’s cookbook is, in fact, not magical at all and has nothing to do with the calzone golem. It was stolen and has now been returned to Benito. The party took nothing other than the cookbook from Werdna’s place because they did not want undue attention brought upon them or their new business partners. They all got some rest at a local inn courtesy of Benito and we’re getting ready for session 5.

Mark
 

Heya. I´ve enjoyed reading your session reports (one of the few available here). Any new sessions to report ? :) I´ve just began to learn to GM myself (hard to get people together regularly enough to play as much as i´d like to) and i enjoy this game immensely. I think session reports are a good way for beginners to see how other people play, if for nothing else, then to get ideas for their own adventures. Anyway, nice reports and i hope there´s more coming.