Empire in Flames: Reading Warhammer's "The Enemy Within" Campaign

THE ENEMY AT THE END
Empire in Flames is the final volume in The Enemy Within Campaign. I’ve reviewed all of the other pieces, and I’ve put off drafting this assessment. I really love where TEW starts and it bothers me that this story concludes it. The bottom line is that Empire in Flames disappoints. And it’s a different disappointment than the previous volume Something Rotten in Kislev. SRiK was an interesting and dynamic set of scattered adventures shoehorned into the campaign. It went on a strange, out of place sidetrack. Most of the problems I had with it stemmed from that. As a module, it was pretty cool and worth playing. I can’t say the same of Empire in Flames.

First- YCMV- “Your Campaign May Vary.” I’m sure GMs can craft an impressive campaign and series of adventures from this book- but they have an uphill struggle. That success will be based on the skill of the GM presenting this and buy-in of their group, rather than the story presented being compelling or interesting. I’m not a big purchaser of modules; I prefer sourcebooks. All of the earlier pieces in this series offered both engaging narrative and rich background. EiF doesn’t. It is more of a classic straight-line module, a significant shift. I’d heard that Something Rotten in Kislev got jammed into the campaign series at the last minute, and a couple of commenters on my review confirmed that. I’ve also heard that Empire in Flames had production or editorial problems- but I don’t know the specifics. I’m going to wait to look into that until after I’ve written my impressions.

PRESENTATION
Empire in Flames is a hefty hardcover, coming in at 148 pages. It is strangely smaller than the other volumes in the series, which I believe were A4 size. The pages here are 8”x11”. That’s a small point; it says something unflattering about me that series inconsistencies like that bug me so much. The cover is also bright, bright yellow. Now don’t get me wrong- when I play boardgames, yellow is my color. But man, that is bright and kind of weird- especially in contrast with the front and back cover images. The interior text design is ok, but another change from earlier volumes. There’s a slight shift in font and size which doesn't read as nicely. EiF looks dense and there’s a reliance on italics for emphasis constantly.

The book draws from the usual stable of excellent Games Workshop artists. In fact many of the illustrations appeared in earlier books in the series. I stopped counting after the first dozen reuses. The new art is ok; I don’t think Colin Howard’s work is as strong as the others, for example. Overall the feeling I get reading through the book is messiness- as if GW really wanted to get this assembled and out the door. It is still decently put together, but not as amazing as the other books in the series. The thing I find weirdest about this is that Carl Sargent wrote it. He created Power Behind the Throne and many other amazing rpg products.

TEN THINGS I HATE ABOUT EiF
Ok, maybe hate’s a strong work…dislike? Anyway, spoilers.

Princess escort. The Emperor dies. You’re assigned to get a magic artifact to mark the new emperor and prevent chaos. You travel and dungeon-crawl to get it. You come back in the middle of a battle and the item finds the new emperor. You’re asked to be a messenger and then a demon pops out in the middle of the coronation. You punch it and win or you punch it and die.

I may be simplifying things a bit.

1. NO, YOU DON’T GET TO ROLL
“Empire in Flames is not an adventure like Power Behind the Throne. In PBT the PCs could try any one of dozens of approaches to get at the information they needed. This is an adventure with a linear plotline. Here, there are clearly defined adventure episodes and clear goals.”

That’s on page one. This is an adventure where you go from point A to point B. Either you succeed at the next checkpoint and move on, or you fail and hit the ending. The module includes many vignette pieces to distract players from the fact that they’re on rails. But most of those don’t have a real bearing on the main plot. Throughout the book you see phrases like ‘players should realize their only choice,’ ‘one course of action will present itself,’ and ‘nothing the PCs can do…’.

2. THE DRAGONLANCE PROBLEM
I’ve often heard gamers who dislike “story games,” point to the Dragonlance series as the place where things went wrong. They believe that instead of an adventure, those modules encouraged a certain kind of railroading- a chance for the GM as frustrated novelist to lay things out on paper. I don’t know if I agree with that specific assessment since it is often used to excoriate any kind of plotting and incident in adventure writing. But Empire in Flames does feel like that to me. It is as if a team sat down with this question: “What happens in the Empire?” Then they wrote out the history and detailed the roles and actions of the Great Men in the setting. They drafted a novel set in the Warhammer world. Only once they did that they asked: "Wait, what do the players actually do in this?" And they tacked on some bits for that.

3. I LIKE TO WATCH
The players have little control at crucial points. In just about every key and interesting moment, they’re observers. If they can act, it is usually after the fact. Or their actions are defined as having no real impact on the course of things. In many places you have extensive dialogues between multiple NPCs (all in italics) where they talk and talk. It is like a screenplay. There’s nothing player love more than to watch “cooler than thou” NPCs make decisions and drive the action.

4. WHO WERE YOU AGAIN?
The plot hook coming out of previous adventures is that the players are made Knights Panther and sent to Talabheim and then Altdorf. That makes at least some sense if you come from Power Behind the Throne. Little consideration is given to the impact of the events of Something Rotten in Kislev; you essentially put the PCs in the same place and ignore anything coming out of that arc. But even more there’s little sense that anything the players did in any of the earlier modules has any bearing. It just isn’t taken into consideration at all.

5. FROM CoC TO D&D
The earlier adventures in the series are all mysteries. They borrow heavily from Call of Cthulhu, with the players slowly uncovering, tracking down, and shattering chaos plots within the Empire. Hence the name of the series, The Enemy Within. You have subtle horrors, tough choices, variant paths, and the players putting together the pieces to come to a solution. Even the odd-man-out- SRiK- is at heart a series of mysteries and puzzles. Say goodbye to any of that here. For the climax they throw away all of that in favor of an old-school cross-country adventure with no mystery. Or at least no mystery you actually have the opportunity to solve.

6. UNLIKE MAGELLAN
The adventure doesn’t gel. In earlier TEW modules, incidents and encounters played into the larger story. If you ran into someone, they could appear later as a resource, plot hook, or enemy. If you had a fight, it revealed something about the plot, offered a clue, or showed the players some aspect of the world & background. Here they're more often speed bumps or distractions. That’s especially a problem if the group has been trained that incidents are meaningful. If you start throwing a bunch of weird stuff at them, they’re going to bite down hard and not let go. You run the risk of bringing the pacing to a halt. All of that isn’t to say that what's on offer isn’t cool. Sargent offers some really interesting bits, concepts, and scenes- they just don’t connect with one another.

7. MAGIC!
One of the things I appreciate about the Warhammer world, at least as it has been presented earlier in The Enemy Within has been the relative scarcity of significant magic. It isn’t exactly a low-magic world, but magic has been rare and dangerous. Consider that Power Behind the Throne turns on two key ‘magic’ innovations to run the plot: hypnotism and a doppleganger. That works because they’re unusual and cool devices and feed the mystery. The players don’t think, “well it can be anything because there’s all this magic around.” There’s much more of that in this book- with tons of chaos cultists, magic monsters, demons, flying carpets, and such. It breaks the tone established earlier.

8. COMBAT!
There were combats in the previous adventures, that’s for sure. But they played into the story. They were challenges- with implications and choices. Some required careful planning and management to deal with successfully (consider the climax to Shadows Over Bogenhafen). Here we have many combat encounters, with many feeling like filler- in contrast to the earlier volumes. We also have an extensive dungeon crawl. Now that may fit better with some group’s playstyle- but I suspect if they played through the rest of the series, that won’t be what they’re expecting or comfortable with.

9. YODRI/YORRI
Here’s an idea. If you have two major NPCs- especially ones who appear late in the story in different places – DON’T MAKE THEIR NAMES NEARLY IDENTICAL. Don’t do that especially if they happen to both be important members of a particular faith. And both be connected to the big bad (killed by it, possessed by it). There’s clearly no actual relation/connection between these two, one’s a semi-immortal Dwarf avatar and the other’s the human high priest of Sigmar. As an additional problem in this, the book says that more information on Yorri can be found in the profile section. No it can’t. There’s no info on him there.

10. GOTCHA!
He was actually a demon! Ha! (Twice).

OVERALL
I never ran past Power Behind the Throne, in part because I disliked EiF's set up so much. There are some interesting ideas, but I think they fit with a radically different campaign. The Enemy Within deserves a capstone that fits with the earlier material and makes the group’s earlier decisions and successes matter for the later game. It deserves a mystery, a tough one with the potential for interesting failure and fallout, rather than having to simply reload from a save point. I’m sure GMs have run this and had a good time. But I suspect that’s coasting on the goodwill of earlier volumes and skilled GM effort, rather than any strength of this module.

THE ENEMY WITHIN CAMPAIGN

The Enemy Within

Shadows over Bogenhafen

Death on the Reik
Warhammer Adventure
Power Behind the Throne
Warhammer City
Something Rotten in Kislev
Empire in Flames

Something Rotten in Kislev: Reading Warhammer's "The Enemy Within Campaign"

THE KISLEVI PARADOX
Something Rotten in Kislev (SRiK) is simultaneously two things:

*A really interesting, rich, and detailed Warhammer FRP module covering a remote area with a unique and intriguing culture.

*A terrible entry in The Enemy Within Campaign series.

Something Rotten is the fifth in that classic campaign for Warhammer Fantasy. Here’s the problem, SRiK doesn’t fit with the rest of the modules in the arc. Those previous have been about hunting down the subtle influences and conspiracies of chaos cults operating in the background and shadows of the Empire. They have liberally borrowed from Call of Cthulhu, peppering in a few bits of classic adventuring with investigation. The first four modules built a solid background players could interact with. As well there has been a slowly growing sense of unease- that the elements we’ve seen throughout the modules have been, in fact, building towards something.

Something Rotten throws that out the window. We move out of the Empire, add more high fantasy elements, and lose the thread of the conspiracy we’ve been following since the beginning. It’s an odd choice and it feels like they had the Kislev module done and decided to slot it into the Enemy Within series to increase interest. That may not have been the intent, but it feels like that. The module itself seems to recognize that strangeness. It has more material for handling the game apart from TEWC than it does in connection with it. The module presents a new set of pre-made characters. The previous set appeared first in The Enemy Within pack and have been the default assumption throughout the books, with text and illustrations supporting that. This book ditches that in favor of these new pre-gens; they’re referenced in the art and color text. I may be wrong about the slotting of SRiK into the Enemy Within, but material gives that impression.

THE LINEARITY QUANDRY
SRiK opens up another set of questions about how modules are designed. I’ve read some criticism of earlier modules in the series, in particular Death on the Reik, as too restricted and linear. I find that strange because DotR and many of the other adventures actually allow pretty open approaches on the players’ part. There are funnels- key points and incidents the stories move through. But I’d argue that’s the nature of a module. Otherwise you’re looking for something like a sourcebook or list of story hook ideas. I rarely run from modules these days- I believe that City of Lies was the last one I ran directly. I do think there’s a fair criticism to be made about modules which run the players on rails- ignoring or restricting their choices, especially with phrases like “The group will be unable to do X regardless of how hard they try.” But I think in assessing modules, scenarios, or adventures, you have to acknowledge that there’s likely a plot or story the group will be working through.

PRESENTATION
Something Rotten’s an impressive book- a 140+ page hardcover. Of that, 120 pages cover the text of the material with the rest given over to handouts and maps (most printed on a different paper stock at the end of the book). Again, GMs will have to make the tough choice between breaking the spine to scan the handouts or cutting them from the book. The text design follows the pattern of earlier volumes, except that there’s more use of three-column pages throughout. That makes the book dense and I found myself having to take breaks in my reading. The art’s excellent. Martin McKenna supplies the art for the first two-thirds of the book, and then other artists take over. The cover’s evocative and perhaps a little deceptive for the players (sometimes a good thing). Overall the book looks nice and the cultural illustrations for the Kislevi cultural groups are dynamite.

The biggest change, perhaps, from the rest of the series lies in the authorship. Something Rotten’s written by Ken Rolston- contributor to Paranoia, Mystara, Star Frontiers and others. Graeme Davis’ listed as supplying additional material, but it feels in tone and approach like Rolston’s book. I think its worth noting that Rolston’s a lead designer for Morrowind and Oblivion. GM’s may notice some shared DNA between those later materials and this one. (My wife has a theory about just how much Glorantha and Runequest shaped the world of Elder Scrolls…and Rolston wrote for them as well…). The text is easy, though at times it takes an adversarial approach to the players- describing with relish how to knock them back in line.

THE PRISONERS’ DILEMMA
Something Rotten in Kislev breaks into four major sections, plus the handouts at the end. After a quick outline of the book it spends several pages discussing how to bring players into the module. As I mentioned earlier, the first assumption presented is for players not coming in from Power Behind the Throne. It suggests a “Kislev” campaign opening with the players imprisoned and then ordered to join the Knights Panther and take on missions.

Wait…isn’t that how Morrowind and Oblivion begin?

The other option, coming from Power Behind the Throne, again has the players imprisoned and released to go carry out missions for the crown. There’s an option for “non-arrested” PCs, but that just involves cutting the lead scene off of the arrested version.

In my experience players don’t like to be arrested. They don’t like to be thrown in jail. They really don’t like then being made to do adventures as a condition of being released. There’s a huge burden of resentment, anger, and revenge you put on the story if you take this approach. Mind you, it isn’t essential to the story- and a GM can easily dismiss it. But doing so forces the GM to acknowledge and praise the skills and abilities of the PCs- something the book seems loathe to do. Some GM’s will find that squares well with their general approach. I’m probably a more forgiving and soft GM, so I’m less keen on punishing the players right out of the gate.

Kislev itself echoes various Eastern European cultures. I’m not an expert, but offhand I’d say I see elements borrowed from Polish, Hungarian and Russian history. As a rural and rough area, it contrasts with the relatively civilized Empire the players will likely have been campaigning through. With the material on pages 7-16 (plus the maps), a GM could easily set up a campaign for a significant arc. I’d say this is where Something Rotten really shines. The gazetteer and cultural material presented are clear, playable, and different. The adventures presented build on these ideas, making this a module which will likely require many sessions to get through.

THE VOLTSARA ENIGMA
The first of the three adventures, "The Beast Child," takes up about thirty pages of the book. The premise is a simple one- with the PCs sent to see about potential Beastmen attacks on the Kislevi village of Voltsara. Once they arrive there, they must follow a trail to figure out the nature and location of their opposition. The adversaries are tough- wickedly nasty in WHFRP terms, and the adventure can extend past that conflict into the exploration of dangerous ruins. The adventure is interesting, focusing in part on dealing with the local spirits of the Kislevi. Players will have to tread carefully with these powers- lest they manage to offend them and suffer dire consequences. The end of the adventure provides a nice dungeon-crawl with room for the GM to modify the events.

That being said, the spine of the adventure is pretty set. The group will find themselves following a path pretty clearly from A to B. The process and details of negotiating with the deeply described spirits does open up the path somewhat. Different groups may take vastly different approaches. However, the book undercuts that a little with risks and consequences. Several times, where the players could screw something up (often easily screw it up) the book says the that plot moves forward anyway, with only a minor penalty. Where the story offers real choice and openness it works best (like planning the final attack), but it also includes several ‘led by the nose’ sequences.

THE CHERNOZAVTRA AFFAIR
The second adventure, "Death Takes a Holiday," is a little shorter (about 25 pages), but more difficult in many ways. The group is sent to the remote city of Chernozavtra to deliver a message. There they find an encampment of Goblins cutting off a group of Dolgan Horsemen. More importantly, Chernozavtra turns out to be filled with undead under the command of a potent necromancer- the person they have to deliver the message to. This means some diplomacy on the group’s part in dealing with both the Goblins and Kislevi to get to the city. In both cases, the players can easily screw the pooch and set the conflict ablaze. Going through the goblins the PCs will have to suffer abuse and keep their cool which may not work for all groups.

The story presented seems to have many options, but actually they all funnel down to one result. I think a creative GM could make something really interesting out of this set up. As presented in the story, the players are effectively screwed. They’re going to get captured and dragged before the Necromancer- and there’s a moral dilemma at that point that some players will be (quite reasonably) pissed about, where the group needs to accept that the Necromancer here isn’t so bad after all. He gives them a massive info-dump (part of that in the form of a handout), gives them magic items, and then sends them on their way. GMs will right away see just how directed Death Takes a Holiday is; they’ll need to conceal that from the players or take a modified approach. I like a lot of the details here, but I’d have to make some seriously changes to run this.

THE BOLGASGRAD GAMBIT
The last adventure, "The Champions of Death," is the longest. It ties into information gained in the previous adventure. It also has some weird parallel choices and details (undead in the streets, players having to buddy up with evil). This adventure feels most like the earlier portions of The Enemy Within: investigations, conspiracies, chaos cults. But I don’t think it comes together as well as those do. One thing it does do is to provide a nice Kislevi backdrop of a remote city/town- which GMs could easily borrow for other sites. It also has some truly nasty adversaries; like others presented in the book these are enemies who will kill the party easily if riled. That device wears out its welcome pretty quickly. The ending also puts the players in a really bad position- with some potential consequences and curses which the book spends several pages detailing. There’s an interesting story here, but again I think one GMs will have to work hard to polish up.

THE EAGER SUMMARY
Something Rotten in Kislev doesn’t work as a part of The Enemy Within- that bears repeating. So how well does it work just as a module? I think the adventures themselves have really interesting plots and details, but they need development and modification by GMs to make them work. Of them, "The Beast Child" requires the least tinkering. For my part, I think that work is worth it. I really like the Kislevi background as presented here- and I’ve adapted Kislev as a region within my own fantasy campaign. I like the atmosphere, the Eastern European mish-mash, and the cultural dynamics set up. If you’re a GM with an interest in that area, this might be worth picking up. If you’re a WHFRP GM who wants to see unique parts of the world brought to the table, this is also a useful purchase.

Also- small irritation...if your module is steeped in Eastern European trappings, myths, and allusions, why have the title of the module be a reference to a play about Denmark?

THE ENEMY WITHIN CAMPAIGN

The Enemy Within

Shadows over Bogenhafen

Death on the Reik
Warhammer Adventure
Power Behind the Throne
Warhammer City
Something Rotten in Kislev
Empire in Flames

Warhammer City: Reading Warhammer's "The Enemy Within Campaign"

CITY DWARF BEATS COUNTRY DWARF
I really like city adventures- some of that comes from the set and recurring locations, some from the flavor of these places, but most of it comes from providing material I can reuse and sustain. Traveling adventures mean creating new things constantly; given the number of games I run, I’m all about minimizing effort. I’ve mentioned before a few of my favorite fantasy city sourcebooks- Ryoko Owari, the Citybook series, The Kaiin Players Guide. And about my plans to use Microscope to put together acollaboratively built city campaign. I like my city materials with flavor and distinction.

Warhammer City, on the other hand, lives up to its name. It isn’t a bad sourcebook, but neither is it great. It falls somewhere in the middle.

Part of that comes from the setting and part from how the book came about. I’m reviewing this as part of my reading of Warhammer FRP’s The EnemyWithin Campaign. Technically, it isn’t in that series- but it is an obvious and useful companion book to #4, Power Behind the Throne. As stated in the introduction to this book, when Carl Sargent turned in the draft to PBtT, he had much more material on the city itself- too much for the adventure. So they cut out a significant chunk of it, reworked and expanded that and published it as Warhammer City. So it’s useful in conjunction with PBtT- aside from some minor repetition and overlap between the two books.

There’s a logic to titling this Warhammer City. In some ways, despite trappings and details (like being built on a mountain), Middenheim’s the archetypal Warhammer human city, especially within the Empire. The material and structure given here can be adapted to any major city. In the TEW campaign, we tour a few other cities (Bogenhafen and Kemperbad), but they’re very loosely presented. Middenheim embraces the late medieval/early modern Germanic city-states tone and model. Compare this to something like Marienburg: Sold Down the River, which has a more distinct and unique flavor- rather than feeling like an adaptation of 'history lite' to a fantasy setting.

PRESENTATION
Warhammer City’s an attractive package- the original version’s a 96 page hardcover. It does seem perhaps a little thin for a hc, but it looks so nice, I can’t really argue with it. GW also bundled this together with Power Behind the Throne for Warhammer City of Chaos. Hogshead also reprinted this as a softcover under the more accurate name- Middenheim, City of Chaos. The layout’s well done- even cleaner and more open than some of the other GW products of the era. It draws from the same group of artists as PBtT with most of those being quite excellent. I especially like the little signposts and inset maps in the text. The book includes a full color poster map of the city- one that is both lovely and useful. The only problem with it, at least in the original GW version is that it is glued into the book, requiring the owner to slice it out if they want to work with it apart from the rest of the text.

THE BOOK ITSELF
Warhammer City provides rich detail on the city of Middenheim, organized pretty well. It’s definitely a GM’s supplement. The material’s general enough that GM’s should be able to adapt it to another system pretty easily. The book paints a picture of a classic high medieval city- with names and ideas which can be useful. What is does offer is quantity for the aspiring and practiced GM (like recent works Eureka and Masks). It has hundreds of little ideas, a shotgun approach to city presentation. The question is whether that quantity rises to become quality. On that point I’m unsure- the book is good, but feels like it needed to go a few steps to provide something more unified and connected.

The book has fourteen major multi-page sections, plus a handful of minor single or double-page topics. It breaks roughly into three parts. The first of those parts paints the larger picture of Middenheim- beginning with an overview of the city and how it fits within the Empire. There’s a timeline and history- interesting, but less useful for running the city. The material here also indulges in some of the bad punning that hit Power Behind the Throne. Next comes a discussion of the churches and priesthood, expanding nicely on the ideas given in PBtT. The section on city politics comes closest to repeating earlier material, but gets around it with some rich details (including a family tree, something I’m a sucker for). The military overview gives ideas on how those roles could be tied to PC careers. Given that you’re dealing with player characters, there’s the necessary section on law and punishment- including rules for trials and possible penalties. The first part wraps up with a discussion of hostelries and accommodations.

The middle portion of the book is the largest single section, running from page 27 through 57. This presents a detailed gazetteer. The material here is tied to numbered and lettered keys on the poster map, plus additional inset maps for reference. After a couple of pages of generalities, the book covers each district in its own section. These describe the general tone of the district- night and day- as well levels of watch patrols. Key locations within the district get their own small entries- more an overview and description rather than a plot hook. In several places building maps complement these. There’s an encounter chart for each district, often with footnotes. The section as a whole wraps up with several pages of generic NPC write ups corresponding to those encounters. These again offer stats & skills rather than hooks.

The last third of the book is a grab bag- providing more of what I think of as playable material. Most significantly it covers Chaos cults in Middenheim. Players coming into PBtT would be following a particular chaos cultist, which that adventure suggests they will be unable to locate and bring down. WC gives more details on that- enough to offer PCs a rich adventure tying up this last thread. The five page section also provides several other plot hooks which could be easily expanded. Having this here solves one of the significant problems plaguing that earlier adventure.

Strangely more page space is devoted to the tunnels and undercaverns of the city. Given the detail here, I have to wonder if these perhaps figured more into the original adventure but were cut to keep things streamlined. The details here are good- including several maps, multiple adventure seeds, and a longer scenario write-up. The book then switches back to the normal life of the city- giving guidelines for how to present things at the level of the players. That begins with a discussion of goods and services (with prices), then expands that with building plans for typical locations in the city. Four pages of general story seeds for the city come next, a total of five. That section could have easily been expanded- its brevity feels very strange. The following section with key NPCs (repeated from the PBtB book) is longer than the adventure resources. The book ends with a mish-mash: snotball, drug use, rumors, and stats for militia and watch.

OVERALL
I like Warhammer City, but at the same time I wish it did more. There’s some interesting material, but a good deal that feels like filler to me. It doesn’t manage to convey character as well as other WHFRP supplements. Instead it wants to be generally useful, which I believe makes it generic. As a part of the Enemy With Campaign, it offers a helpful but non-essential companion volume to Power Behind the Throne. As a WHFRP supplement it works and will be useful for GMs in that setting. The map and gazetteer section in particular are well done. For GMs running other settings or systems, I’d say there are more useful and compelling city supplements available.

THE ENEMY WITHIN CAMPAIGN

The Enemy Within

Shadows over Bogenhafen

Death on the Reik
Warhammer Adventure
Power Behind the Throne
Warhammer City
Something Rotten in Kislev
Empire in Flames

Power Behind the Throne: Reading Warhammer's "The Enemy Within Campaign"

MIDDENHIEM (NOT RYKEL)

So here’s where everything goes pear shaped. Not for the modules themselves- though by my general reckoning, Death on the Reik’s the high-water mark for the Enemy Within Campaign series. The rest have some excellent moments, but don’t quite reach the same heights. Some require very distinct set ups and party types. This, though, is where my experience of the modules falls apart.

First let me say that I’m a much stronger GM these days than I was twenty-five years ago. Back then I had some decent chops, and combined a wide vision of the story with giving players room for their own choices. But when I had a track I could get stuck on it- meaning that I didn’t roll with the blows well. I remember reading on Reddit several months back a GM freaking out because one of his players was about to advance a level and learn "Remove Curse." He’d built his campaign around the group questing to find the ingredients and knowledge necessary to remove a powerful curse from an NPC. But, to this GM, it wouldn’t be fair if he didn’t allow the PC's spell to fix the curse at the crux of his story. That was in the rules and there weren’t mechanics for more powerful curses. Not allowing it wouldn’t be fair, so he was stuck.

I’m pretty sure that in the time you read that you’ve gone “s’wa?” and come up with at least a half-dozen ways to get around that. That's assuming you’re even willing to accept that as a problem. I point that out because my own story has me shaking my head in retrospect.

As I’ve mentioned before in my reviews of the series, I didn’t use TEWC “as is.” Instead I run it in a more high magic setting, but with Fantasy GURPS, meaning that it still had the normal level and lethality of WHFRP. My players had come off of Death on the Reik with major success and were feeling pretty good. I’d bought Power Behind the Throne and really loved it. I hadn’t really considered if the plot fit with the group I had- I knew I could make it work. I studied the module, cut out the handouts, prepared the table of events, and crafted additional NPC image cards so players would have visual cues. I spent time and effort preparing the adventure. Then they arrived in Rykel (as the city of Middenheim was named in my campaign)…

NO!
In the end, I undercut myself. One of the players had wanted to play a shapeshifter. A small race of those existed in the setting, but servants of the "Big Bad." This player asked to run a rogue shapeshifter and I let him- but with a number of significant disadvantages to make up for it. Thus far that character had managed to skate out of real consequences from those flaws. So when they reached Middenheim, per the adventure, I had the magical check at the gate reveal his race. That resulted in some argument- I wanted to give the player a hassle, but still let him in, otherwise the adventure wouldn’t work. The group as a whole entered a negotiation. Based on some of their reputation and connections, the shapechanger was allowed in, with the rest of the group vouching for her and offering their guarantee of good behavior.

The adventure started out well- the PCs keyed into the main plot quickly. They investigated and spoke with NPCs, with some memorable interactions. But some of the players got bored- this wasn’t their cup of tea. In particular, the player running the shapechanger still bristled at being called on his social disadvantages. So he snuck out to raise some hell- which he did, resulting in his character getting attacked by ruffians.

At which point it all blew up. A series of terrible rolls led to the player being injured, rolling critical transformation failures, and finally shifting into a minotaur and going berserk. He gored his attackers and at least one innocent bystander. This multiple shape-shifting performance occurred in front of town guard. He ended up having to flee- and the rest of the party had to escape Middenheim as well ASAP.

The corner of my copy of Power Behind the Throne’s still dented from where it landed as I flung the book over my shoulder.

Today I’d have handled that differently. At the time, PBtT was one of the most ambitious adventure supplements I’d read. I couldn’t see how to fix that unraveling. Even today it has a weird mix of absolute player freedom nailed down with strange moments of GM/Plot fiat. There’s a distinct split between this module and the first half of the TEW campaign. The two of the authors of the earlier modules appear as editors and developers, but the design credit goes to Carl Sargent, who also wrote for D&D, Shadowrun, and Earthdawn. He contributed to a number of other WHFRP supplements including Lichemaster, The Restless Dead, and part six of the TEW series, Empire in Flames. If the earlier portions of the TEW campaign feel like pulp Call of Cthulhu transported to fantasy, this volume feels more like a purist CoC investigation. Combat and high-gear Chaos take a back seat to politics, diplomacy, and detective work.

YOU PROBABLY GET THAT A LOT
I have the lovely hardcover GW version of Power Behind the Throne. It feels a little thin to be an hc (only 112 pages), but the companion book, Warhammer City, is even shorter. Hogshead produced their own version of PBtT later- with some differences I’ll return to. The book looks and feels great. The layout’s smartly done- tight and dense, switching between two and three column layout as the text demands. You get an enormous amount of material jammed in here. The cover’s one of my favorites- a simple and evocative image in contrast to the baroque nightmares of the other volumes. The actual text of the book covers 96 pages, with the remaining 16 devoted to handouts, GM reference pullouts, and a game survey. These perforated pages can be easily removed if you’re an idiot and want to ruin the book…as I did. Or you could simply photocopy these and keep things intact.

Several artists contribute to this book, with Martin McKenna’s works being especially good. A couple of the artists aren’t as solid, but they also have fewer images present. One nice change is crediting each artist individually for their contributions so you can tell who did what. The previous volumes skipped that (or had a single artist). The writing's equally strong and equally with a few off-notes. More than the before, Sargent indulges in some puns and in jokes- many particularly bad. The name 'Gotthard Goebbels,' the play A Midsummer Knight’s Dream, and most especially the “1812 Over-Cure” (when the starving besieged locals celebrated on badly smoked rat meat).

SEVERE BARGE DAMAGE
In 1998, Hogshead Publishing reprinted PBtT with an additional adventure, designed to fill in the gap between Death on the Reik and this module. The scenario served a singular purpose: to burn the players’ boat. Some people took umbrage at this (“How James Wallis Ruined My Character's Life”) and the author responded (“Yes I Sank Your Barge”). Wallis does have a point- that the presence of the barge as a player resource does potentially drive the campaign in a different direction. The rest of the series assumes the players leave the river behind and don’t look back. In my case, the players fled the city and left the barge. They returned later to find it sunk and a number of their friends and NPCs left there killed. So, yeah, kind of a dick move.

THE SPINE
And now to the spoilers.

The players arrive in Middenheim, on the trail of a chaos cultist left over from the previous module (DotR). The authors set up the pursuit of last of the evil von Wittgenstiens there, so it doesn’t come out of the blue. However PBtT states up front that the players will fail at that- or at least will have to put that pursuit on hold for a long time. That feels a little problematic, especially when the adventure hook/push in this module is abstract, and not the concrete figure of a madman. Middenheim is the location for nearly all of the adventure, with the city as a well-developed backdrop. The complementary volume, Warhammer City, expands that; it isn’t required but it could be helpful for the GM (especially the poster map).

Upon arrival, the players discover that several factions of the city are up in arms about new taxes on Dwarves, Wizards, and Priests. The module assumes that in the course of looking for the bad guy (who they won’t find) they’ll become interested in the tax problem. From there they’ll try to figure out who is behind the taxes, study and become proficient with the power structures and key people of the city, and then convince the Graf to repeal those taxes. In doing so they’ll, at the end, reveal a conspiracy which threatens the heart of this city and Electorate. All of this done against the backdrop of a massive carnival which serves as the ticking clock for the plot.

So as a GM- you have to ask yourself: is this the kind of game my group will buy into? The earlier portions of the campaign had plenty of investigation, but combined that with action and combat for those players not so attuned to that- or more importantly, for characters not built for social interaction. PBtT puts a speed bump before the GM. If they can handle the ride, they’ll find a compelling and rich story. If they can’t, they risk alienating and boring some players.

THE ELSE
The book breaks into three basic sections: set-up, NPCs, events and plots. The first thirty pages lay things out quickly. I opens with a summary of the spine of the adventure, accompanied by discussion of how to handle problems. To be fair, the author recognizes the difficulty the structure may pose to some groups. He suggests some options for handling things- and especially that the GM needs to signal success to the players. The GM has to make clear they can solve this mystery. The problem is one faced by many adventure modules, especially ambitious ones like this- allowing players open choices while keeping them on track. PBtT offers several “hammers” to knock the players back onto the right path. That’s fine. But it also strangely has several heavily scripted moments, especially at the end, which seem out of place with the earlier freedom. Moments of “…regardless of the PC’s actions, the Bad Guy escapes.” A good GM will fix these, but they brought me up a little short when I hit them.

The city background provided is rich and useful- having a separate citybook available means that the supplement provides just enough history to be useful for the story itself (i.e. the Church relations, the family history, the role of the Dwarves). The same applies to the breakdown of the neighborhoods of the city. You get what you need to run this adventure here. If you want more detail, go to the Warhammer City volume. This book gives briefings on the city sections, a rundown of rumors, and many pages devoted to the events and attractions of the Carnival. That’s a great device and one worth lifting for other games. There’s also a nice rundown of the classic methods and sources for investigations (the streets, taverns, churches, commissions, guilds).

CERTAIN PEOPLE I COULD NAME
The middle section of the book (32-70, plus supplemental materials) goes over the key NPCs of the setting. The handout section includes a timetable reference card for each of these- showing where they will be at any time during Carnival Week. There’s also a Master Attractions Chart to make it easy to check who might be present where the PCs are. This section opens with advice for handling that and generally how to run NPCs when players approach them. The buzzword is tolerance- players should fall back on role-playing rather than Fellowship tests. The GM’s encouraged to be tolerant…otherwise the players can alienate NPCs and effectively put themselves out of the running. The advice on running social encounters is interesting, and provides a sense of the complexities the group will face. Can they figure out the desires of the NPCs? Can they get through lackeys? Can they keep themselves from goring a particularly unpleasant character?

Each major NPC (or group of NPCs) gets at least two full pages of discussion, as well as an excellent illustration. The sections provide the basics: personality, stats, likely locations, and general reaction modifiers. It also offers an idea of what the NPC knows, misconceptions they hold, goals, and their attitude to each other NPC (in detail). Most also include a discussion of their role, connection, or victimization by the conspiracy. A number of the NPCs offer red herrings for paranoid players. It can get quite tangled. The actual plot has several layers. Even if the PCs figure out one part, there’s another level that’s nearly impossible for them to suss beforehand. Instead, it is left for a GM reveal the twist at the finish. Done well, that could be awesome- done badly it could feel like the GM’s pulling the party’s success away from them.

I should also note that the NPCs themselves are great. Carl Sargent has crafted great personalities and backgrounds. Some follow stereotypes, but enough don’t to make players cautious about making assumptions. There’s a real sense of a living, breathing social network at work here. Players who like NPC interactions will have a great time with this.

THE END OF THE TOUR
The last section of the book provides a number of trigger events-putting NPCs in the players path. It also includes a number of those “hammer” events I mentioned earlier. These can pound the group back in line or pry them loose from a stuck path. They’re a mixed bag- some are clever, while others feel a little too rigged. The book ends with several pages of discussion of the climax of the adventure- which the PCs shouldn’t get to until the last evening of the Carnival (a trick in itself). The GM will have to juggle this carefully. The finale offers a complex fight and chase, if not perhaps a satisfying one. In the end, hopefully the players will have uncovered the conspiracy and saved the city.

At which point they’re thrown in prison.

Because that’s the set up for the next module. They “know too much” about state secrets, so they’re imprisoned, regardless of their work and the allies they’ve made. I’ve done the prison gambit- IMHO that sucks. Some players will shake it off, but most will harbor a serious resentment against the Graf, the City, the Empire, and even the GM for having done that to them. And what PCs are going to go quietly? If you’re going to run this, you really need to think about that ending carefully before imposing it.

ADVENTURE RAISES NEW AND TROUBLING QUESTIONS
I probably sound more negative about this than I mean to be. The bottom line is that Power Behind the Throne is an awesome adventure, but it offers serious challenges. I think opinions may vary as to whether it follows naturally from the previous entry. PBtT is complex, social-based, low-combat, rigged in some places, player-driven, and a kick in the teeth at the end. GMs will need to read through it carefully, and make appropriate modifications. If I wanted to run this again, I would begin by taking a GUMSHOE approach to the mystery. I’d consider what Core Clues NPCs ought to offer- links which connect scenes and characters. Then I’d map the additional clues available from each. I think doing that would give me a better map to work from, without laying down a definite path for the group. It is worth appreciating how rich, open, complex a scenario this is- published in 1988 and anticipating the more sandboxy adventure settings and modules of the future.

THE ENEMY WITHIN CAMPAIGN

The Enemy Within

Shadows over Bogenhafen

Death on the Reik
Warhammer Adventure
Power Behind the Throne
Warhammer City
Something Rotten in Kislev
Empire in Flames

Warhammer Adventure: Reading Warhammer's "The Enemy Within Campaign"

NOTHING LIKE AN EVOCATIVE NAME…
Warhammer Adventure brings together the first three parts of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay’s The Enemy Within Campaign. While I’ve reviewed each of those parts individually, I thought it would be worth looking at the pros and cons of this compilation version. TEWC has had many different versions over the years. Games Workshop did standard printings, hard-covers, smaller compilations (Warhammer Campaign), and of course Hogshead later did their own versions of these products. So which ones are worth buying if you’re trying to collect this series?

Warhammer Adventure presents the first half of the campaign, covering enough material to fuel a campaign for many months. The campaign takes place in The Empire, a Germanic analogue within the WH world. It has been described as a fantasy Call of Cthulhu campaign, and I think in parts that’s not far off the mark. The various modules, though sharing a theme and elements, take quite different approaches to adventure creation.

PARTS AND PIECES
The Enemy Within (Campaign Sourcebook and Minor Adventure)
Review: The Enemy Within: Reading TEWC

For all my looking back and grumbling, this stuff provided the baseboard for many, many hours of awesome play at the table- YCMV. The Enemy Within kicks off a truly excellent campaign series; certainly one of the best I know. I ran great portions of it using GURPS Fantasy; the basic line of the adventure can be easily adapted and keep its flavor. Take a look at the session reports created by Chris Flood aka MULRAH which begin here. He’s using HeroQuest 2e to get the job done. I think that demonstrates the resilience and depth of these modules.

Shadows Over Bogenhafen (Linear Mystery Adventure)
Review: Shadows over Bogenhafen: Reading Warhammer's "The Enemy Within" Campaign

That simplicity I mentioned earlier makes Shadows over Bogenhafen easily adaptable to other game systems and even to other settings. It works best with low to moderate magic campaigns; high magic systems could short circuit some of the plotlines established here. More so that TEW, SoB shows its Call of Cthulhu roots. Players stumble into supernatural conspiracy concocted by powers far above their pay grade. The enemy connects with an eldritch and corrupting horror. The evil comes original from the fallibility and humanity of a single greedy and foolish individual who tampered with Forces Beyond His Control. It offers a solid and fun adventure, one the players can walk away from with a feeling of success and accomplishment. I recommend it highly for a fun diversion, and as a prologue to the greatest part of the TEW campaign, Death on the Reik.

Death on the Reik (Extended Multi-Part Adventure/Campaign)
Review: Death on the Reik: Reading Warhammer's "The Enemy Within" Campaign

Death on the Reik’s the best part of The Enemy Within campaign. That’s not to discount the strengths of the two which bookend it, Shadows Over Bogenhafen and The Power Behind the Throne. But DotR offers such riches to the industrious GM. I can be a slow and deliberate investigation scenario, with the players following footsteps filled with vile liquid. It can be a truly fantasy take on Call of Cthulhu. But it doesn’t have to be that way- it can be a more door-kicking adventure. There the players hunt down evil and put it to cleansing flame, relieved that they’ve freed the world from such corruptions. On the one hand, it provides enough for the most literal and narrow GM to run a decent series of adventures; on the other, it provides tools to the adventurous GM who wants to expand the story and provide depth and new angles. It remains, twenty-five years after I first read it, one of my favorite adventure modules.

PRESENTATION
Warhammer Adventure is a massive collected softcover volume. It clocks in at about 250 pages. Each module has their own section, with the handouts for that part immediately following it. The paper stock is really quite nice and thick. Each section has its own paper color to help make each distinct. The cover stock is especially thick and strong. The book keeps the blue ink printing for “River Life of the Empire” from DotR, a nice touch. It includes the full-color map from SoB covering the city, and the map from DotR covering Castle Wittgenstein. As far as I can tell, no editorial or significant changes have been made to the material here- it remains the same as the original folio and boxed versions.

THE GOOD

• If you’re looking to track down TEWC, this may be the cheaper way to go rather than picking up the individual books. I’ve seen copies of this go for reasonable prices, but I’ve also seen them go higher- depending on the whims of ebay, Amazon and elsewhere.
• It is nice to have everything together in one place- allowing the GM to check back and forth easily. 
• The production quality is quite high for a reprint. This is one heavy tome.

THE BAD

• If you want to use this book in play, you will have to break the spine. It is glued so densely that there’s not good way to avoid that. I have a fear that once cracked, the book may split and give way.
• There’s a real advantage to only having to refer to a single booklet, of being able to lay a folio flat when you’re running. You can't really do that with this version. 
• You lose a couple of the big maps in this version, the images of the figures created for the modules, the cardstock scene from SoB, and most importantly the material from the interior of the folio covers.
• The biggest flaw in this version comes from the handouts. If you wish to use them, you have three choices. One, find an illegal download and print them from that- with a likely reduction in quality and the dubious legality. Two, scan the handouts and print them yourself. That, however, will definitely require breaking the spine of this book. I imagine doing that and getting decent scans will be unpleasant. Three, cut out and use the handouts from this book. That’s not a great choice, because it means destroying this book. That might be OK, except that GW opted to put the handouts after each adventure, instead of all at the end. That means you’ll end up with weird gap cuts. That gap will especially be problematic for the DotR part at the end with its many handouts. 

OVERALL
If you just want to read through TEWC, this compilation could be useful. If you’re really looking forward to actually running it, be prepared that you may have to sacrifice the book itself to the gods of gaming in order to do that.

THE ENEMY WITHIN CAMPAIGN

The Enemy Within

Shadows over Bogenhafen

Death on the Reik
Warhammer Adventure
Power Behind the Throne
Warhammer City
Something Rotten in Kislev
Empire in Flames

Death on the Reik: Reading Warhammer's "The Enemy Within" Campaign

I’M ON A BOAT
So in Death on the Reik you get a boat, technically a barge. I don’t think that’s a spoiler. The barge remains one of my favorite plot devices and it holds this extended campaign module for WHFRP together.

I remember many great scenes from this campaign, but one stands out for me. The group sailed down the river in the wake of a torrential rainstorm. The banks of the Reik had flooded and swathes of damage remained visible. Some victims had been caught in flash-flooding and wash outs. I described the aftermath in detail, trying to convey the sense of desperation and the smell of it. It helped that the house we played at was less than a hundred yards from a river. In the summer the stink settled over everything. So I painted a delightful word picture, ending on a fairly graphic description of a bloated and floating cow carcass bouncing lazily off the side of the barge.

The PC priest, Yorich Skrull, spoke up. He served the god of knowledge S’ave Knor, part of the slap-dash cosmology I’d assembled when building the campaign world I dropped Death on the Reik into. In any case, Yorich’s player looked around the table and asked for help in dragging the cow’s horrible dead body up on deck. A brief discussion ensued. Yorich’s player was legendary for coming up with strange plans, some might say counter-intuitive, others insane. Finally the rest of the group pressed him- exactly why did he want them to haul this horrible bovine corpse onto their ship?

“Ah, because I’m going to cook it for dinner.” Yorich’s player responded. He had been in charge of provisions and the like for many months.

“Um…you understand that Lowell said this thing is horrible and rotten…”
“Yup. Don’t worry I have a purify food spell.”
“Wait…even if you purify this thing of the rot, it still will be…it still will taste…” I could see the other players begin to become uncomfortable.
“I’ve got a really good cooking skill. It’ll taste fine. You guys never complained before.”

There was a brief moment of silence.

“Wait…you’ve done this before…fed us…”
“Yup. Cheap, easy, and good for the environment. I always hunt up the garbage and roadkill when we travel…”

Which was true. His player had been doing this pretty much from the start. As you can imagine the table exploded. One outraged player shouted that he’d never eaten Yorich’s cooking- he never would have. Others simply gagged at the thought of it.

Later the party would arrive at the final castle in this campaign- a place that would make Yorich’s cow carcass look like filet mignon...

THE DARK AND CHEWY CENTER
When I think of The Enemy Within Campaign, I’m really thinking of Death on the Reik. Other entries in the series have great elements and even sublime bits that stand out. But DotR nails it. More than an adventure, it is a campaign in itself. It shows its Call of Cthulhu roots pretty clearly- with the fingerprints of classic modules like Masks of Nyarlathotep and Shadows of Yog-Sothoth across it. It isn’t perfect- it has some linear elements requiring the players to follow certain paths. But it also combines that with the open framework of river travel. DotR provided many, many sessions of great fun for my campaign years ago. Rereading it from a modern perspective, it remains awesome.

PRESENTATION
I originally ran from the boxed set of Death on the Reik. That contained an 88-page main booklet, the sixteen-page “River Life of the Empire,” a double sided map with the adventure region on one side and the final castle on the other, plus pages and pages of handouts printed in dark purple ink on tan paper. Several other versions exist- a hardcover GW version, the Warhammer Adventure compendium (which includes the pullout map), and a later Hogshead reprint. All of have left of my boxed set are a few stray handouts and the "River Life" booklet. The Warhammer Adventure collection is a decent replacement, but doesn’t quite have the same feel for me. I regrettably cut out some of the handouts when I ran a version of this years later. These days you can print everything out easily; I really wish I’d at least photocopied the material rather than going at the book with scissors.

There’s a lot of material in both booklets- and the layout keeps up with that. The text design and standard two-column format makes the information accessible. Handouts are reproduced in the text, making it easy for GMs to remember what they’ve given the players. Boxed text for NPCs takes the time to explain their motivations and how to play them. The illustrations by Martin McKenna are outstanding. I like GW sourcebooks with diverse artists, but here having a single person doing nearly all of the interior art pulls the book together. I like how literal the art is- most of the images could be copied and shown to the players to illustrate a place, person, or situation. Finally the writing remains strong and consistent...with a couple of exceptions. If you’re cool with goofy references and in jokes, especially among names, then it won’t bother you. If not, you may be a little put out.

TO YOUR SCATTERED CHARACTERS GO
“River Life of the Empire” remains one of my favorite pieces of secondary gaming material. The campaign spine of Death on the Reik requires the players be on the river and involved with the sights and sounds of it. RLotE offers ideas and materials for that, useful well beyond the bounds of DotR or even Warhammer Fantasy. The concepts here could easily reframe a campaign, and extend the lifespan of the adventure hugely. So much so that when Hogshead republished the sequel module to this, the first thing they did was bring that to a halt (but we’ll come back to that in the next review). RLotE does what the best supplements do- puts the tools to create a larger, open, and more interesting world in the hands of the GM.

The booklet weighs in at a slight twenty pages, with two of those given over to a cover illustration and table of contents. It opens with an overview- suggesting ways the GM can use the material, especially building encounters. Mechanical details follow- like how to handle tests for boating, weather, and damage to the ship. The critical hits discussion (complete with awesome spot illustrations) is great. Next the book lays out some sample encounters, with a random chart for them. Most of these are given a couple of paragraph description, but there’s an extended example (The Maria Borger) with some classic bits. Standard encounters include floating parties, gypsies, pirates, and so on. The four-page pullout section discusses the kinds of people met on the river and offers diagrams of boats. A little under two pages explains how locks work- and how that can be played out at the table. An additional set of encounters, focused on NPCs offers even more ideas for adventures. GMs could put on many diverse sessions with just the material in these sections. Finally RLotE wraps up with two pages of trading rules. These are fairly simple and abstract- exactly as they ought to be. They have enough detail to layer some color on, but not too much to require an spreadsheet.

PRACTICAL INVESTIGATIONS
If you’ve read Death on the Reik, then you know what you think. I know I enjoy it immensely as a campaign module.

If you haven’t read it, unlike many of my reviews, I don’t want to spoil it. So I hope you’ll indulge me as I “talk around” the adventure. Let me give you a sense of the general shape of it. They talk about the really strong points of it. By doing so I hope to give you a sense of whether or not this is something which would fit with your game, your style, and your taste. As with the rest of the Enemy Within series, the set up posits a fairly low-magic world. Running it in a different context will require some work. But I can imagine it function with a retro-clone like Lamentations of the Flame Princess, as an extension of ideas from Strange Aeons, or perhaps even Conspiracy of Shadows. I ran it in GURPS and I’ll mention again Chris Flood's great series of session reports detailing his experiences running it in HeroQuest. Modern GMs have the advantage of being able to rework and adapt the handouts more easily when porting the adventure over to a new setting. I ran this before easy access to DTP and had to change my setting or hand correct details.

Death on the Reik has a number of basic hooks- including ways to move from ShadowsOver Bogenhafen to this. Playing SoB isn’t necessary, but allows resonance for certain plot devices. Not doing so requires some retinkering, and the 88 page adventure booklet does a good job of setting that up. The gist of it is that the players end up pursued by chaos cultists and eventually end up in control of a barge on the river Reik. They have a number of options at this point- the ‘fun and games’ section of the story. The GM may wish to slowly build up the details or thrust the players quickly onto the path. The PCs end up in pursuit of a Chaos Cult and mysteries surrounding their actions and purposes. Eventually they get involved with a Dwarven group, which in turn leads them to the site of a chaos happening which offers clues to the horrors. They make their way through other obstacles (and red herrings) before ending up at the Chaos-infected estates of those they hunt. There they must deal with a village and land beset by mutations and awfulness. If they manage that, they can make their way into the castle of horrors.

Seriously. Horrors.

It is like Lovecraft by way of Clive Barker- like the family drama and creepiness of Castle Amber turned up to 11 and then doused with ichor. The castle’s great- with all kinds of unpleasant details and rooms which make any particular running of it completely different. That part of the adventure alone takes up 28 pages of the book, not including the fourteen pages covering the village and surrounding areas. The players can take many approaches to dealing with the castle denizens. The book simply puts the material out there- giving the party plenty of room to hang themselves.

This is really a supernatural-horror fantasy scenario, with the players in pursuit of a great evil perhaps a little beyond their means. At the same time, if they play smart they can really bring a solid defeat to the forces of chaos. Some GMs may wish to play this more overwhelming, in a truly purist Call of Cthulhu vein. Others many want to go more pulp- with swords striking against the darkness. One beauty of the set-up is that it lends itself to either approach. While the spine of the story and plot arc remains rigid, how players deal with any particular section stays open.

The scenarios the players face along the way are interesting, clever, and satisfying. They offer a great tour of both the Warhammer mythos and of different places in the region. The traps and plots twist and turn nicely without being convoluted. Most importantly to me, the NPCs have real life to them. They feel fully fleshed and interesting. Even the most secondary of them feel complete. The bad guys are bad, the scumballs are scummy, and yet they feel like dynamic characters. It all works for me. Plot, background and NPCs- those elements together make DotR awesome.

OVERALL
Death on the Reik’s the best part of The Enemy Within campaign. That’s not to discount the strengths of the two which bookend it, Shadows Over Bogenhafen and The Power Behind the Throne. But DotR offers such riches to the industrious GM. I can be a slow and deliberate investigation scenario, with the players following footsteps filled with vile liquid. It can be a truly fantasy take on Call of Cthulhu. But it doesn’t have to be that way- it can be a more door-kicking adventure. There the players hunt down evil and put it to cleansing flame, relieved that they’ve freed the world from such corruptions. On the one hand, it provides enough for the most literal and narrow GM to run a decent series of adventures; on the other, it provides tools to the adventurous GM who wants to expand the story and provide depth and new angles. It remains, twenty-five years after I first read it, one of my favorite adventure modules.

THE ENEMY WITHIN CAMPAIGN

The Enemy Within

Shadows over Bogenhafen

Death on the Reik
Warhammer Adventure
Power Behind the Throne
Warhammer City
Something Rotten in Kislev
Empire in Flames

Shadows over Bogenhafen: Reading Warhammer's "The Enemy Within" Campaign

WELCOME TO BOGENHAFEN
Shall I begin with spoilers?

I’m going to.

I don’t recall much from the sessions I ran Shadows over Bogenhafen; that would have been ’88 or ’89. The GURPS Fantasy campaign I ran ended up more than a little schizophrenic- with the players fighting bandits and wolves one week and then exploring vast and hugely magical ruins the next. The campaign somehow managed to sustain high magic with the relatively “normal” scale of GURPS. You could die easily, or at least be taken out badly if you didn’t play carefully. Running a WHFRP module with the system made sense- in both that death could be cheap and players were often out of their depth.

In a fit of strangeness, the party had just returned from an expedition to Ylaruam, where they’d gone out into the deep desert and found a massive Nithian ruin relatively intact. The fought through it- encountering magical torture devices, humiliating traps, rare artifacts, fonts of pure mana, and finally battling a Nithian astride a manticore. They triumphed, escaping with vast loot and no memory of what had transpired. A curse on the Nithians wiped all memory of it from their minds. So all they knew was that they’d walked out into the dunes, gotten banged up by something, and found vast supplies of cash and magic items. From there they traveled to Bogenhafen.

...Where the GM (me) somehow roped them into taking on a horribly mundane mission- steering them into the scenario. So they effectively went from the Battle at the Bridge in Moria to Ratcatcher’s Assistant.

OK- so a terrible tonal shift, but this was over twenty years ago.
As I said, I don’t remember much about running it except for this incident. The party had done the task, uncovered something and returned to their patron, more than a little shaken. Their employer began to question them when Izan (the friendliest of barbarians) raised both his hands signaling silence.

“Dude…
…there’s a demon in your sewers.”
The patron started to speak.
“No…dude.” Izan repeated himself. “There’s a demon in your sewers.”

TRAILING THE ENEMY
Shadows Over Bogenhafen’s the second part of The Enemy Within campaign for WHFRP. Where the first book, The Enemy Within, offers more of a campaign sourcebook, SoB presents a fully developed adventure. Several versions of this module exist. I have bits and pieces of the original GW folio edition (booklet and cover) plus the consolidated edition presented in Warhammer Adventure. The later lacks some of the frills, but does put everything together in one place. One incredibly tightly bound place. Seriously, the spine on Warhammer Adventure scares me- like if I try to pull it open too far it will either snap back and take a finger or simply shatter and split the book in twain. Hogshead also published a hardcover version of this, combining it with TEW, which makes sense.

PRESENTATION
The original GW version comes with a 56-page A4 booklet; the folio cover including an interior map inside; a large fold-out full color map for the city; eight pages of handouts, and a card tile for the final fight area. Everything looks good and is well done- the booklet does a nice job of shifting between two and three column design, depending on the information being delivered. Little details like the headers and font choices make this hold together. More importantly you have Will Rees’ artwork throughout. These super-creepy images sell the atmosphere- a horrible and corrupted version of Albrecht Dürer that still freaks me out when I look at them. The cover image does this especially well- though it gives away a little more of the plot than I’d like. There’s a feel to GW art from this period- illustrations you can look at and immediately know where they come from. Once again the writing’s excellent- clear across the board and quietly funny in some spots.

My favorite part of the booklet may be at the end where they have a page offering special miniatures for the module. These aren’t great looking figures- early GW models could be hit or miss, but they certainly looked like nothing else coming out. I like that there’s a set for the sample PCs given for the campaign. I have to wonder how many times those characters have had to live through this? You could order the eighteen figures of the set for 12 pounds- plus post, by sending them a cheque or telephone ordering. At the time, though I wanted the figures, such luxuries were a little out of reach.

THE MEAN STREETS (AND SEWERS) OF BOGENHAFEN
The actual premise of the adventure is pretty simple. The PCs stumble onto an evil ceremony. They have to figure out how to stop it. I think that’s part of what makes Shadows Over Bogenhafen, and the best of the TEW pieces work. The adventure in the first volume felt slightly more complicated than necessary- the players could walk away confused about what had happened. SoB’s simplicity allows them to introduce a couple of significant red herrings and, more importantly, spend time building the atmosphere and the set up. Bogenhafen becomes an awesome backdrop GMs can linger in during this adventure or return to again later (assuming the players don’t allow it to be sucked into the void of Chaos).

The booklet splits into eight major sections, plus a pullout in the middle. This has a nice GM’s map of the city, keyed locations and the stats/details for the major NPCs and the Watch. The first eight pages of the booklet discuss how GM’s can bring players into the adventure. Obviously threads tie back to the first part, TEW, but those are loose enough that new groups can easily be brought in. The booklet lays out the spine of the plot for the GMs in clear language- always a must for this kind of scenario. Three pages offer some political background on the city- the power players, guilds, and priests. This approach is characteristic of TEW- laying out the factions and movers & shakers. The players will likely interact with these groups- usually as subordinates or petitioners. Knowing how they relate (and can be pitted against one another) can be key to certain approaches solving the problem.

The set up (pages 9-16) offers a series of number of events and scenes illustrating life in Bogenhafen. I really like this part- hugely useful for any kind of city adventure. There’s a town fair, the Schaffenfest happening, which includes markets, freakshows, and performances. The adventure remains open-ended at this point- giving the GM bits and pieces they can drop into the story to set up what comes later. That ‘later’ takes the form of an escaped mutant goblin from the freakshow; the party’s hired to go into the sewers to catch it. A little railroad-y, but a fun exercise and one which the players will likely buy into. Once again SoB does a great job of keeping this open and flexible. We get info on the structure of the sewers, lists of interesting encounters and events, and finally the important locations which lead to the revelation of the main ceremony actually happening. Including the discovery of a demon. (“There’s a demon in your sewers.”)

From there the players have a number of options the book outlines. PCs could conceivably move “off the reservation” at this point, but SoB’s structured pretty well. Player options feel constrained, but but not restricted. The PCs choosing to become investigators provides the main story drive- for money, for morality, or for sense of adventure. This leads them into the web of local politics, and figuring out exactly what the demon (and the ceremonial room it seemed to be guarding) is for. SoB offers a loose timetable of events- what happens once the demon’s been spotted, the actions of characters within the conspiracy, and the outline of the now rescheduled ritual. The GM will have to suggest the ticking of a clock in the background, and keep actions more tightly scheduled from the moment the PCs emerge from the sewers.

Shadows over Bogenhafen does a great job of providing options the GM can present: places to check out, people to talk to, new suspicious evidence to uncover. It sets these out very well- there’s redundancy, nice clear core clues, and plenty of additional information for the players to bring the story together. There’s so much good stuff here, that I’m unsure what to make of the Magirius incident. This happens after the players have done some investigating. Magirius, a member of the conspiracy, comes to the PCs and offers some specific and detailed info on what’s happening. A good GM will makes sure this gets played out as a result of player actions, rather than a deus ex machina moment. Of course, Magirius heads off and is promptly murdered. The PCs head to his house based on a false message and are immediately framed for the crime. It sticks a little in my craw, especially since the TEW adventure also forced the PCs along by suggesting that the authorities suspect them of involvement in a murder. It does trip the clock and set the stakes high, and when I ran it, I made the issue more that the murder of Magirius suggested that the ritual was nigh.

The fight to stop the ritual could be nasty depending on the group. They have to get through thugs and then face a couple of serious magic casters. However, the ritual itself is relatively easily disrupted- several details are necessary to carry it out and the removal of any one of them can cause things to go awry…the most likely outcome of the fight. At which point a demonic force appears and swallows the main bad guys. Awesome if done well, but perhaps unsatisfying for PCs who would like to have bashed in heads. There’s also a discussion of what happens if the PCs fail. It isn’t pretty. 

OVERALL
That simplicity I mentioned earlier makes Shadows over Bogenhafen easily adaptable to other game systems and even to other settings. It works best with low to moderate magic campaigns; high magic systems could short circuit some of the plotlines established here. More so that TEW, SoB shows its Call of Cthulhu roots. Players stumble into supernatural conspiracy concocted by powers far above their pay grade. The enemy connects with an eldritch and corrupting horror. The evil comes original from the fallibility and humanity of a single greedy and foolish individual who tampered with Forces Beyond His Control. It offers a solid and fun adventure, one the players can walk away from with a feeling of success and accomplishment. I recommend it highly for a fun diversion, and as a prologue to the greatest part of the TEW campaign, Death on the Reik.

THE ENEMY WITHIN CAMPAIGN

The Enemy Within

Shadows over Bogenhafen

Death on the Reik
Warhammer Adventure
Power Behind the Throne
Warhammer City
Something Rotten in Kislev
Empire in Flames