Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay Advice
The other night, I was asked to give some advice to a new Warhammer GM. I'm not really good with general questions, but here's what I had to share:
Warhammer is grim and perilous. Kill people and destroy things.
Warhammer is grim and perilous. Kill people and destroy things.
Don't be shy about killing PCs, if that's where the decisions and the dice roll lead you. Heck, there are Fate Points for them to use. What I really mean is kill NPCs.
Do the PCs have family? Find a way to kill them (off camera, naturally). Better yet, find a way to kill them that gets the players involved with the current adventure (a mysterious group of mutants rolled through the land, killing everyone in their path...which happened to include the ratcatcher's parents who lived on a farm outside of town. Someone needs to hunt the pack down and destroy them or report back to the town council). Let the PCs make friends with the weaponsmith, the armorer, the innkeeper, whoever, and then kill them. Make it bloody. Make it gruesome. Make the characters sad/mad/furious, depending on how attached they were.
Those NPCs you don't kill...well...some of those friends the party has made are obviously going to turn out to be cultists, right? And that is going to come up at the most inopportune time for the party. A time like when the herbalist is watching the party's back, only to allow chaos to sneak up on the party. Or the apothecary supposedly is supplying them with healing potions, only to find out he's getting them addicted to a drug or poisoning them or slipping powdered warpstone into the mix. You should definitely try to work in a long-standing friend or acquaintance who suddenly turns out to be a cultist who betrays them. Just don't use it too often.
Destroy houses, inns, towns, forests. The more attached the players are, the more time you spent on something so the players think it is really important...those are the things to destroy. Let them know the world is seriously dangerous and nothing is sacred.
Those NPCs you don't kill...well...some of those friends the party has made are obviously going to turn out to be cultists, right? And that is going to come up at the most inopportune time for the party. A time like when the herbalist is watching the party's back, only to allow chaos to sneak up on the party. Or the apothecary supposedly is supplying them with healing potions, only to find out he's getting them addicted to a drug or poisoning them or slipping powdered warpstone into the mix. You should definitely try to work in a long-standing friend or acquaintance who suddenly turns out to be a cultist who betrays them. Just don't use it too often.
Destroy houses, inns, towns, forests. The more attached the players are, the more time you spent on something so the players think it is really important...those are the things to destroy. Let them know the world is seriously dangerous and nothing is sacred.