<strong>Liber</strong> <strong>Fanatica</strong> - Volume III : The Game Master’s Guide Articles 2
<strong>Liber</strong> <strong>Fanatica</strong> - Volume III : The Game Master’s Guide Writing a Campaign by Wim van Gruisen T his article is about creating RPG campaigns. The focus is on Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay (any edition), but the topic is generic enough to be of value for other RPGs as well. A campaign is nothing more or less than a series of adventures, in the same setting and usually with the same group of characters. A good campaign, however, is quite a bit more than that. This article intends to give you some instruments with which you can make your campaign better. WFRP is a good game for running a campaign – for one thing, campaigns were, and are, published for the game. The The Enemy Within campaign for WFRP’s first edition is generally known as one of the best fantasy campaigns ever published for a roleplaying game. Other campaigns were the Doomstones campaign and the privately published A Private War by Tim Eccles. They are out of print now, but with a bit of luck you can find them on Ebay. For the new edition, Black Industries has published The Ashes of Middenheim the first part of their new Paths of the Damned campaign. The sidebar mentions all published WFRP campaigns that the LF team knows of. We can distinguish between different kinds of campaigns. The simplest one is the episodic campaign, in which the PCs face a different problem every session. They fight beastmen on Backerstag, are opposed by mutants on Marktag and discover cultists on Konigstag, all without one encounter being related to the other. It is sort of the A-team approach to adventuring; every session a new adventure, and rarely is one related to the other. The rambling campaign is a bit more structured; this one is characterised by longer story arcs, and different adventures are related to each other, the ending of one often leading into the next one. There is no clear end, however, with no single goal which the stories lead to. This campaign can go on forever. A comparable TV program would be your average soap. A step above the rambling campaign is the structured one; here we have a campaign that has a definite beginning, middle and end. Adventures during the campaign are in the service of this structure. Each type of campaign above adds some complexity to the previous one. This article concentrates on structured campaigns, as they are the most comprehensive. Simpler types of campaigns are automatically covered. WFRP Campaign’s The Enemy Within - The Enemy Within - Shadows over Bogenhafen - Death on the Reik - Power behind the Throne - Something Rotten in Kislev - Empire in Flames This is the quintessential WFRP campaign, widely recognised as one of the best roleplaying campaigns ever written. The PCs become deeper and deeper involved in a plot to have the Empire descend in a civil war, and deal with those Chaos cults to profit from it. The last volume is both very difficult to get your hands on, and seen as one of the weakest parts of the campaign. Further, it does not fit with the world in WFRP2. For all these reasons, Alfred Nunez has taken it upon him to write an alternative ending, Empire at War. Doomstones - Crossing the Border (a small introductory adventure published in Hogswash) - Fire in the Mountains - Blood in Darkness - Death Rock - Dwarf Wars - Heart of Chaos The Doomstones campaign is rather atypical in that it is set far from the civilised world. It is also more high-powered than the standard WFRP setting, with the PCs getting their hands on a number of insanely powerful artefacts, the Doomstones. A Private War - A Private War - All Quiet in Kislev - Homeward Bound - Wheatland Colonies: A Pass Too Far Not part of the official canon, this campaign was published privately by Tim Eccles. The tone is much more down to earth, and magic and monsters are noted by their absence. The stress is much on the evil that men do. Mini campaigns for WFRP1 can be found in - The Restless Dead - Return of the Lichemaster - Dying of the Light Paths of the Damned - The Ashes of Middenheim - The Spires of Altdorf - The Forges of Nuln This is the first campaign written for WFRP second edition. As this is still being in development, we’ll refrain from discussing it. 3
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