5 Tips for Running Enemy in Shadows (Warhammer Fantasy)
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- čas přidán 8. 07. 2024
- An overview of the legendary WFRP RPG adventure, Enemy in Shadows, along with tips on how to run this adventure like a pro. Whether you're running it for Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, or porting it to another game system, you'll find these GM tips helpful.
You can get Enemy in Shadows here: preview.drivethrurpg.com/en/p...
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00:00 Introduction
02:48 Overview
08:32 Tip 1 - Pick Doppelganger Carefully
10:30 Tip 2 - Intro Merchants Early
13:25 Tip 3 - More Reasons to Stay
16: 26 Tip 4 - Don't Use it All
19:39 Tip 5 - Create New Handouts
23:26 Bonus Tip - Etelka!
24:32 Bonus Tip - Josef!
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I ran this a while back and focused the Schaffenfest a bit more on individual players:
* One PC was a witch hunter, so I changed Doktor Malthusius into an undercover witch hunter focusing on the Red Crown cult who are big into mutants and beastmen. The player loved this.
* One PC was a knight, so I used the suggestion in the 4e version of the adventure about a young nobleman - I made it the son of the local Graf who canonically doesn't have a son - being too scared to joust and hiring the PC. Said PC rocked his opponent's world with some amazing rolls, and the Graf was ENRAGED because he intended for this to teach his cowardly son a lesson. End result had the PC being followed by the ur-Graf who wanted to learn his ways ... and then the boy getting stabbed by Gideon who was wearing the knight's face on the final night...
* One PC was an Entertainer turned Spy and she spent a lot of the Schaffenfest with a band of players, basically earning money. She was, in fact, the only one, because I jokingly threw out a new mechanic where each PC made a Cool test or they spent 1d10 shillings at the fest buying junk or food or the like. Most of the PCs found themselves dangerously close to completely broke.
* One PC was a Smuggler turned Boatman who intentionally ripped off Dean Winchester from Supernatural for his character, so I made Josef a Bobby Singer stand-in and then, using the recommendations from awesomelies blog, systematically killed off the rest of the crew (except the baby). Brought in the Renate NPC from DOTR earlier and she became that PCs former girlfriend who ultimately adopted the baby. With that in mind, I also changed Gideon slightly so he required human "vessels" but burned through their bodies ... until the PCs brother who was the current vessel. This gave the PCs a minor tie-in to the Big Bad and I could use glimpses of him to lead that PC into trouble. At the end, when the ritual was stopped, the brother's last word was a furious "Etelka!" which, along with the letter found on Teugen's body, made her a person of interest; later, when the PCs briefly returned to Altdorf, the witch hunter and spy respectively reported the events and were instructed to track her down and capture her, so that has led to them secretly working against each other in DOTR.
I will also be running this again in a couple of months, this time using GURPS for my online GURPS game (OlympusRPG). One of the Players has already played through this (he was the Dean Winchester ripoff), so I'm having to make some tweaks to keep him guessing:
* The Coach & Horses Inn is going to have a combination of plots happening ala the Rough Night at the Three Feathers adventure with: Lady Isolde being a runaway and her brother arriving with some thugs to take her back to a wedding she fled; the inn management is going to be replaced with the cultists & mutants from "Night of Blood" who are planning shenanigans; Phillipe the Gambler is actually Phillipe the Witch Hunter on the trailer of the above cultists; Blackie the Crow is a wizard's familiar and reading over Ernst's shoulder and will thus summon a lesser daemon. All of these events will happen mostly simultaneously, with the PCs in the middle and hijinks ensue!
* Kastor Lieberung is alive when the PCs meet him along with some cultists who have just ganked the mutant brigands, and will shout for his men to kill the PCs: "No witnesses!" He begins casting a spell, which will make him Target Number One of normal PCs ... and he's got 1hp remaining, a HT 8 or 9, and maybe a level of Easy to Kill. :) I'm totally ripping off the signet ring but he will also not look IDENTICAL to the selected character; he'll just look so similar they could be brothers or maybe a father/son combo since the ages are likely different.
* I'm leaning toward making the Ordo Septenarius patsies, with the real villain being the Magistrate the PCs meet in the Schaffenfest who loathes the Bogenhafen Merchant Houses for having so much power. Haven't fully decided there, but it'll definitely keep the player who has played this guessing.
* I'm thinking of having Etelka have a brief cameo as she interacts with Malthusius who, in this incarnation, will probably be a member of the Red Crown cult.
* I'm also really hoping the PCs thoroughly botch the investigation because I absolutely want the big Chaos Gate thing in Bogenhafen...
This is a really great synopsis of the campaign and appropriate advice, especially the fifth one is valuable to me.
Meanwhile, I am slowly preparing a playlist with my background music for this campaign on my channel - if anyone is interested in deepening their impressions of this campaign, the appropriate music is perfect for it.
Would love to know what music you are using!
@@1ShotJC Thank you for your interest. I can't post direct link, CZcams blocks links, but it's on my channel playlists: "The enemy within playlist"
I'm presently running it using WFRP3e. This is a great review. Thanks.
I have added bounties and missions (for the bounty hunter and thief chracters) on handouts from the rumors and foreshadowed aspects to keep the characters moving forward. I also added AFFAIR OF THE HIDDEN JEWEL from the Companion that is done during the Weissbruck section. Party has zero interest in doing Schaffenfest, so they did everything else about town and I added a bounty for the gobbo' which I'll have escape BEFORE they get to that scene, or have a different character spy it first, and then get the assignment from there. I also withheld Fortune points and noted they get them as gifs from Ranald by doing stuff at Schaffenfest. I'll see if that bait catches on.
I like that take. And if your PCs are motivated by bounties, have them make friends with the magistrate Richter. He can pay them to police the festival, maybe keep an eye out for troublemakers, and then giving them a reason to explore it a bit more than they might and then eventually go catch the goblin.
This Video is pure gold, thank you so much!
Fantastic video ! A lot of amazing advice. I've started running the campaign with my group, I will definitely use most of your tips!
Thanks, very helpful. Looking forward to more in the campaign!
Like a lot of these ideas. For my group, I’m using the fest to introduce the merchants with them sponsoring knights at the joust. They can learn more by listening to complaining squires.
GURPS! Nice, will check this out.
I love the Gideon murders idea. Even if I never run this particular adventure I will steal ideas from this video for constructing adventure hooks.
I also love the idea of using letter handouts to fill the players in on off-screen backstory once it becomes relevant.
Great video, thanks!
Thank you
Thank you. 😊
Good video, and great advices. Well done.
Some good tips there. I could have done with this 6 months ago before I started Enemy in Shadows! I told my players at the start that their characters had to be 'motivated' to save the Empire to stop them just running for the hills when things get difficult. I hope you plan to do a similar video for Death on the Reik and the other parts of Enemy Within.
Oh and my players completely blew the scenario and barely escaped with their lives!
Yeah, looking forward to some Death On The Reik coverage too.
Yup, my first run of this one ended in a TPK because the players waited for the total to end before springing into action.
wow! I am currently preparing Enemy In Shadows and reading through the adventure. This tips are amazing.
I am planning to run the entire campaign (TEW), so the tips how to better link it to DOTR are very welcome.
Even as standalone Enemy In Shadows is pretty complex and knowing the traps and how to avoid them from someone who already played it (several time) is superb. Thank you!
The main thing to better link Enemy in Shadows to DotR is making sure Etelka gets more notice. I'm going to cover this in my DotR video in a few weeks, but one thing I do is after the adventure, I tell the PCs that Teugen's servants were all interrogated by the authorities, and they found out 1) he was getting daemonic objects sent regularly by Etelka of the Red Crown in Grissenwald; 2) Ernst Heidelman (who I also put on the boat going to Bogenhafen in Enemy in Shadows) was implicated as delivering those items. Then the PCs will definitely be more interested in continuing the hunt that is featured in DotR
Thanks for this, some fantastic advice. Particularly like the idea of having Josef get their help with the initial delivery to the Steinhagers.
My players are just leaving Weissbruck so this is very timely for me. 😁
Thanks for this video. I am looking forward to if you ever do a similar video for the rest of the enemy within campaign
Definitely going to do one for Death on the Reik soonish
I would include at least 1 other side quest/event, and that's the Bunki Artist. But ONLY if the artist is Philippe DesCartes from the opening act. I love tying things back in.
Great tip to make Etelka more visible! It's kind of tricky, that entire Death on Reik is about traveling to Grisenwald to find Etelka, but actually the first book doesn't even mention that she's so important. If you're playing for the first time, you might even forgot to mention that one letter from her. Then you're opening the Death on Reik book and wondering why the hell my PCs are going to Grisenwald!?
Yes! This is exactly what happened to me the first time I ran Death of the Reik. And the fact that they bury the opening scene with the wizard who can help motivate the players in the appendix makes it even harder to GM. But I’ll save that for my DotR video :-)
Great video! Any chance you'll do the other chapters?
Definitely going to do a Death on the Reik one soon!
6:59 Playing this now! I’ve decided nurgle is going to harass his old nemesis Tzeentch from the get-go, with kastor dying to nurgle cultists instead of mutants. Should be fun to add one more layer!
Hahaha I pity your poor, soon to be disease-ridden, players...!
SHADOWDARK reigns supreme and would be perfect for Enemy in Shadows!
Yes, that would be a great choice!
what is so bad about something rotten in kieslev?
It was published as a follow-up to Power Behind the Throne but was entirely disconnected to its events, locations, and feel. It would be like if Return of the King threw Frodo and Sam on to a remote tropical island pirate adventure with no mention of rings or Sauron.
Sorry, this might be a stupid question..... but where do you get these color profile pictures of these characters? The book only has them in black and white
Photoshop has a neat built-in colorize function - so when I made my VTT tokens I just used that, and it worked pretty well!
Photoshop has a neat built-in Colorize function. So when I made my own VTT tokens, I just used that. Turned out pretty well!
You ran it in GUPS?? I've been working on that for the last couple of weeks! Do you have any notes or insights on a blog somewhere? Ive already ran the entire thing in WFRP 4e, but I've realized that I like GURPS more, and I thought I was the only one...
It was a pretty straight forward conversion - I just used regular GURPS Magic rules and the fantasy races from Banestorm. Worked great. You can find all the GCS files for all the characters and bad guys on 1shotadventures.com under the More VTT assets section - it took me a bit to tune the demons to feel right, but worked out in the end. Good luck!
Great video & really fun scenario. Love the variety and Crusher rules...but, no mention of the Shaffenfest gorilla? Feels like an oversight...
The sad carnival gorilla is going to get a video all to himself
This adventure sounds amazing and your video is awesome but I think I would use a different system. I've only played Warhammer fantasy a little bit but it was by far my least favorite game that I've played. This seems like a really good call like a Fouilloux adventure and pretty easy to Move it up in time so that's probably what I would do. Thanks for the awesome video!
Yes - because so much of it is about intrigue, you can easily port it to almost any system without a lot of work!
Always use the pregens!!! Stress that the players are now adventurers and not that fond of their everyday life.
We finished Enemy in Shadows and now I think it might be a great story but not in this system. It was the worst campain I've ever played in my history of PnP. Without any house rules for corruption it feels more like an one shot from Call of Cthulhu. The WFRP progression system is so slow that you dont feel any improvment in your char and corruption counter instant at max. I dont know how you can sustain the constant corruption in this campain ...
I can see that - WFRP is a system I think a lot of groups don't take to for whatever reason. And if the GM doesn't tune corruption, it could easily become a mutant crazy person campaign after a few sessions. My favorite time I ran this was with GURPS which was gritty but still had lots of opportunity for advancement from this to Power Behind the Throne.