Today, we’re interviewing Jesse Burke, AKA Gitzman, of the Reckless Dice Podcast and Gitzman’s Gallery. He’s one of the most respected members of the Warhammer Fantasy RP community, and it was a pleasure to interview him.

First off, how long have you been gaming?

Jesse: I’ve been gaming in a variety of forms for as long as I can remember. However, I like to think that my Gaming-gaming started some time when I was 8 or 10 when I discovered my first hardcore hobby shop and the 2nd Edition Star Wars RPG Source Book which blew my mind! After having my mind blown, I saw all the miniatures on the wall nearby and I was hooked.

Warhammer instantly became the foundation of my gaming career, initially with Warhammer 40,000 and shortly after that, Warhammer Fantasy.

How long have you played Warhammer Fantasy for?

Jesse: I toyed with the Warhammer content and models for many years but I started playing actively towards the end of middle school with all my pals.  Those guys and I would play any chance we got, at the playground, after school, weekends, you name it. However I’m someone ashamed to admit that I didn’t own a fully painted army until I was 21, working for Games Workshop in San Jose, California (you were not allowed to play in the store unless all your models were painted, and we all know playing with unpainted models should only be done in a dark room with no windows).

I was not aware that an RPG even existed for WFRP until I worked for GW (not that they sold it anyway).  I initially dismissed it as a cheap cash-in and happily kept playing my tabletop games.  To be honest, it was the cover art that turned me off. It made me feel like it was an ancient product and I’ve often had a hard time with really old school RPGs so I said “meh”.

It was only about five years ago that I started getting out of the tabletop games and transitioning into the 2^nd edition of WFRP.  I gradually picked up all the books and leveraging my knowledge of the Warhammer world from the tabletop experiences began having a fantastic time.

What were your initial thoughts on the 3^rd Edition of WFRP3?

Jesse: I heard that a new edition was released from a friend of mine who ran a game shop in my home town.  He told me all about this crazy company, Fantasy Flight Games, and how they make ‘pretty things’.  He told me about the huge box, the full color book, and all I could keep thinking was that this FFG company is trying to sell this by spending a lot of money of presentation, forgoing quality and content.  He then went on to tell me it was $100, and I told him ‘yea maybe some other time’.

But the seed had been planted, I really enjoyed WFRP2 and I really hated that I joined that edition near its ending years.  If I was going to play WFRP3 I wanted in, and I wanted in at the beginning.

So, I picked up the core box and the Adventurers Toolkit and started hammering through the reading.  Loved it since.

What caused you to put together your site, Gitzman’s Gallery?

Jesse: So I’m a graphic designer at heart (and for work more often than not), and I’ve always had a soft spot in my heart for maps, especially the old, artistic ones.  Warhammer has a huge library of fantastic maps from the last 25 years and I started to collect them to use in my WFRP2 games.  It took a LOT of work and searching to discover all the maps available out there.  So many are either lost, or buried so deep in obscure gaming pages that they will never be found by the average gamer.

So I figured, this was a lot of work, I did the searching, why not make it easier for people like me who want to find this stuff.  So I started Gitzman’s Gallery (originally a sub site behind http://www.SweetWaterCakery.com) as a resource site for Warhammer Maps.

At the same time I started developing other resources and gathering tools from other community members and bringing them to a central location.  Gitzman’s Gallery grew as additional and varied content started rolling in.

What was the inspiration behind the map?

Jesse: I’m sure we’ve all seen the great work by Andreas Blicher and Alfred Nunez Jr. all over the web.  Those maps are fantastic.  One weekend I was looking them over and thought to myself, man these are just like big puzzle pieces, I could just hop into Photoshop and clip out the edges and start making one big map.  They were after all mostly the same scale.  So for a weekend project, I did just that with all the provinces of The Empire.  It worked pretty good, though there were a lot of broken bits and areas I had to repair, not to mention many casualties of Photoshop (the cities which were on the borders who often lost their names during the merging process).

I had so much fun that I posted the map on the forums as a Large Warhammer Map. I got a huge response from the community and a ton of involvement suggesting additions, marking changes, etc.   From this I realized a few things: the community LOVES maps, the maps I was using were largely out of date and were not being updated, and the community wants to contribute to the project.

With all that in mind, I went back and upgraded the map, incorporating the feedback from the community, adding cities and locations that were missing reflecting new content. I then added other maps, working towards the Super Huge Warhammer Map.  At this time it was still black and white.  And the next iteration of the map is when things really took off.

I struggled with all the scaling and graphic styling issues from pasting all the dozens of maps together. So, I redrew and rescaled and retyped, and colorized the entire thing. I created a new PSB (large format Photoshop file) with dozens of styles and thousands of layers allowing myself the ability to expand and modify to my heart’s content.  This gave birth to the Super Huge Detailed Map of the Warhammer Old World or SHDMotWOW.

Are you planning on encompassing the whole of the World of Warhammer with the map? Any chance of further details? City maps incorporated into the world map?

Jesse: I’d love to at some point, but there are a lot of problems I’m starting to face as I get larger and larger. I have completed content as far north as the North Pole (Chaos Wastes), as far East as the Worlds Edge Mountains, as far South as Khemri and the tip of Araby, and as far West as Albion.  This content is complete and changes only as new content is released.

Now I am currently working on a very large expansion to the areas mentioned above.  Since I’m already at the north pole, I can’t go any further that way.  I am making a large push East encompassing all of the Dark Lands and the Ogre Kingdoms.  Additionally I’m pushing south, encompassing the northern half of Araby.  This effectively doubles or triples the size of the current map!

The problems, which I mentioned earlier come about in that there are no detailed maps of these areas.  The Empire was great, very high detail and very granular detail.  All maps beyond The Empire become less and less detailed until they are only continental maps marking major cities.  So, I’m working with what I have.  I mark what data we know exists, and can fill in more as time goes on.  The real difficulty is just tackling the scale of it all, these new areas are HUGE. Making a desert visually appealing at that scale without it being a solid texture is quite a task.

Adding detailed city maps to the SHDMotWOW will likely not happen.  In order to accomplish this I would have to expand the resolution of the map many, many times to accommodate additional zoom levels to the scale of the city.  This would exponentially increase the file size of the map to a point that not I, my server, or my patience can handle =).

You’re part of the Reckless Dice Podcast.  What made you start the podcast, and what are your plans for the future of the show?

Jesse: I’ve been a big fan of podcasts in recent years, especially the ones from IGN. I’ve been wanting to do one for a long time now but never had the chance or the local friends to pull it off until Paul Tobia (Rorschach on FFG forums) asked if I’d like to join him and give it a go.

Paul wanted to address misconceptions of WFRP3, I had the ear of the community or at least some credit after putting the map up, and between the two of us we had a strong knowledge of the game system and lore. We had a will, the means, and a boat load of motivation, so we made it happen.

Over the months the show has become a sounding board for discussion of WFRP3, the mechanics, and how to enjoy the system.  We publish a formal episode every two weeks, cover a specific mechanic of the game in addition to a major focus topic.  On off weeks, from time to time we post extra content, such as interviews, live play sessions, featured content, etc.

In recent months we have been able to get our feet in with FFG and some of their freelance writers.  We look forward to interacting with their marketing department and discussing upcoming products, straight from the horse’s mouth.

What’s your favorite aspect of the new rules?

Jesse: I’ve always been a gamer who likes to keep the game moving quickly and fluidly.  I think WFRP3’s approach to the high level, don’t get bogged down in the details, game play mechanics are what I enjoy the most.  It really expands into all facets of the game.  You don’t buy a 34.5 foot piece of rope with an iron grapple, instead you buy ‘common binding or climbing equipment’.  Even distances are more abstract.  I really feel this makes the players concentrate on the story and adventure rather than how many squares away from monster X are.  This approach to rules makes me feel like min maxing and rules lawyering are not only looked down upon but quite hard to even do, and that makes me happy =).

What’s your favorite Warhammer Fantasy Character?

Jesse: Man that’s a tough one. But if I had to pick one it would have to be good old Grom the Paunch.  He was an old school goblin warlord with an iron stomach.  He had eaten so much that he was as big as an orc. Rumor has it he ate a meal of troll-meat which not only made him enormously fat, but also gave him life-long indigestion and flatulence, oh and regeneration.

Are you involved in the tabletop wargame at all?

Jesse: I’ve been involved with the tabletop games for ages now, most heavily during my time with GM and the following years where I participated in several Warhammer Fantasy Battles tournaments and painting competitions. I was never particularly amazing at the game itself but I became quite an accomplished painter.

Even though I have not played the tabletop game much in the last few years (WFRP3 kind of took over) I still have my fully painted High Elves and a Chaos Mortals army in the closet ready to rock.

What other RPGs do you play? What’s your favorite (non-WFRP) game?

Jesse: I’ve played a variety of RPGs over the years and many of them disappear into obscurity rather quickly.  However there are a few that always remain on the top of mind, most notably 7^th Sea and Call of Cthulhu.  I don’t think CoC really needs an introduction or explanation, everyone who’s played it loves it.  I’ve never been a good GM at it, but have loved every adventure I’ve played in the system.  7^th sea on the other hand is just something special. It’s like a RPG that encompassing why James Bond, Indiana Jones and any Pirate movie you’ve ever seen are great. It was all about being daring, dashing, witty repartee, swinging from chandeliers, and kissing the damsel.  Those games felt like you were in an 80’s action movie.  Excellent.

Thanks to Jesse for taking time out of his schedule for this interview. Be sure to check out Gitzman’s Gallery and Reckless Dice for everything Warhammer Fantasy RP related.

Transcript of an actual conversation between Bridget and me.

Bridget has a cut on her finger that looks weird.

Your typical, run-of-the-mill Mark of Chaos

Me: “Is that a mark of Chaos?”

Bridget: “I don’t think so…”

Me: “Did you make any recent sacrifices to the Ruinous Powers?”

Bridget: “Not as far as I’m aware…”

Me: “None to Nurgle, dark god of pestilence and disease?”

Bridget: “No…”

Me: “None to Khorne, god of bloodshed and war?”

Bridget: “I opened a couple of cans of corn today, does that count?”

Me: “No sacrifices to Tzneetch, god of change?”

Bridget: “I haven’t so much as changed the sheets…”

Me: “Any to Slannesh, god of pleasure and pain?”

Bridget: “Oh, well, yeah. That one.”

"Let's take a little D&D here, some Savage Worlds here... It's alive! ALIVE!!!"

There are a lot of things I like from the fourth edition of Dungeons and Dragons, and Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 3e, Burning Wheel and Savage Worlds.

From D&D, there’s the Skill Challenge system, as well as Rituals and Martial Practices.

From Warhammer, there’s the Progress tracks, Stance Meters, and Party Sheet, among other things.

From Burning Wheel, it’s the Lifepath system, the simplicity of dice rolling, the way combat works, and the Duel of Wits.

From Savage Worlds, it’s the speed of character creation, the simplicity of overall play, and the way the dice move up in steps.

How can all of these mesh together? I think you could make an RPG that has all of these (or at least, most).

The system would use a lifepath system, perhaps asking questions along the way like Mouse Guard (which is itself based on Burning Wheel). If you kept the system simple enough, you could come up with your character within a half hour (like Savage Worlds). Your character would have various stances, which would help or hinder you in different respects, and Rituals, Martial Practices and Skill Challenges would all be tied into Progress Tracks.

Combat would use a simplified Burning Wheel system, as well as employing the Duel of Wits.

That would be my ideal system. It’d take a lot of work to implement, but I think it could all go together quite nicely.

What systems would you love to see mashed together?

When I played with the Game Knights back in Virginia, the game involved lots of table talk, a bit of drinking, and was really, really light on story. It was basically a way for us to unwind and catch up after a long week.

I’ve found a different dynamic with the group I currently have. This is a group of guys I’ve found through internet groups, postings at game stores, and simply running into them at events. As such, the dynamic is quite different.

When they arrive, it’s to game. There may be jokes, one-liners, and the like, but we get through a lot of story in the little time we actually have. There isn’t a lot of “how was your week, let’s complain about work, etc.” there was in the other group.

Is this a bad thing? I don’t think so. I’m really enjoying this group, and the story we’re coming up with. Also, with combat running much quicker than 4e, we’re able to delve more into plot than we were in Virginia.

Anyway, just an observation from me. How is your group dynamic?

The Altdorf Region, where they've spent the majority of their time. Click to enbiggen. Used without permission from Gitzman's Gallery.

Saturday night, the group finally gathered again. Lots of real life got in the way of actually assembling, and this time, Ed brought along a friend, Alan.

Alan arrived a few minutes before 8:30, and so we sat down and began making his character. He ended up with a Human Thug, armed with a cudgel, and some fairly good stats. Ed was a little late, but it worked out great because Alan wrapped up his character just as Ed arrived. Ed quickly spent his advancement points to change careers from Coachman to Hunter, which seemed to him to fit more into his style.

After the events of last session, Gorni (Dwarf Thief) was really badly injured after the battle with the Orc. They decided they needed to find someplace to hole up and heal, so they set out for Blutroch, a nearby town on the edge of the Reikwald Forest.

Gorni decided to help Kutcher relax a little, and loaded him up on some Bugman’s XXXXXX Ale. Kutcher became highly intoxicated, and took two days to recover, while Gorni simply laughed, unaffected by the strong alcohol.

Gorni, Dwarf Thief (This will be the figure I'll be painting up).

After two night’s rest, and with Gorni still out of sorts, they find the town littered with wanted posters. For both of them. Kutsher, the former coachman, was supposed to deliver Gorni to Altdorf, as you recall. Since he hadn’t checked in, he was assumed to have helped the prisoner escape (which he had).

They quickly packed up, and left town. Gorni told Kutsher that he had a friend in Rechtlich who would be able to help them, a fellow by the name of Johan.

They approached the walled town at midday, but decided to scout around the city to find another way in. There didn’t appear to be any other way in, so they decided to wait for nightfall and enter then, when the shadows were deepest.

The evening brought with it heavy rains. They approached the gate, where a small window opened. The night watch peeked out, and demanded to know why they came to the gate so late. Kutsher began fumbling his way through an answer, until Gorni stepped in. The short thief was not only nimble, he was a fantastic liar. Some good dice rolls got them past the guard and into the town, heading down at the local tavern. They walked in, and Gorni instantly recognized Johan nursing his cup against the bar.

Johan was surprisingly soft spoken, for such a brutish man.

Kutsher, Human Hunter (this is the figure I'll be painting up).

Johan had seen the wanted posters before they arrived unexpectedly, and seemed unsurprised that Gorni sought him out. After a brief moment where Johan mentioned that he could make some good money off the two, he offered to help.

Setting the two up in the attic of the inn, he decided that the next morning, he’d go to the magistrate to set things right.

It was at this point, things went downhill.

Arriving at the magistrate’s, he tried to make the case that the two were innocent, and the postings should be revoked. This, of course, made the magistrate question why it was he was concerned about them, and whether they were already in town. A series of failed Guile checks led the town guard to begin a sweep through the city, looking for the two criminals.

Johan made his way back to the two, where they tried to figure out what to do. Just as they were about to flee the inn, the town guard arrived. Escaping through a window to the roof, Kutsher and Gorni raced across the rooftops, while Johan, being unsuccessful in his rolls, decided to head back inside. He successfully bluffed past the guards, and stepped into the street in order to keep up with the others above.

Johan, Human Thug (this figure is already painted up by Bridget).

Gorni descended into the marketplace in the center of town, disappearing into the crowd, while Kutsher continued on the rooftops. One of the guards saw him, and began firing his crossbow at him, but he avoided the shots, and leapt through the air into the town’s clocktower. From there, he was able to see the city gate, and his only chance for survival.

Gorni worked his way through the crowd, avoiding any guards, while Johan had trouble catching sight of him. Once Gorni exited the main bustle of the marketplace, Johan spotted him right away.

Kutsher jumped out of the window of the clocktower, and landed on another rooftop, to find himself face to face with a large, burly guard. Without thinking, Kutsher raised his crossbow, and fired an Immobilizing Shot (an action card Ed is fond of). The bolt struck true, burying itself into the guard’s leg. Kutsher leapt from the roof into the street, where he encountered Gorni and Johan. The city gate was ahead, and the guard behind, they ran towards the gate, where a guard stood watch. Gorni swept his leg out, knocking the guard down, and the fled into the Reikwald Forest.

After a few hours of pursuit, they finally found a cave to hide in, and plan their next move. They were now all wanted men…

And that’s where we ended it. They were really eager to continue on, but I had been up very, very early to go up to Wisconsin to take photos of the Wisconsin Marathon, so we wrapped it up there.

I think they all had a really good time, and I like where they’re taking their characters. I was also happy to incorporate another player into the group without the standard “Suddenly, another character is with you on the road.”

From what the players are saying, Greg is looking to send Gorni into a life of a Troll Slayer, while Ed is interested in Kutcher becoming a Witch Hunter, so I’ll have to figure out how they can transition into those careers soon.

I’m finally caught up: All eight episodes so far of the Reckless Dice podcast. It’s the only podcast out there (as far as I’m aware) that exclusively covers Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 3e.

The hosts are very knowledgeable about the subjects, have great banter, and none of them sounds like an old grognard.

One thing that’s kept my podcast-listening low is hearing grumpy people with annoying voices and horrible audio quality fumble through a show, and spending two hours to do it. Not so with these hosts.

They keep the show moving and entertaining, their audio is all on par with each other, and they stay focused.

Each show follows a standard format: The hosts start the show, Jesse “Gitzman” Burke talks about the updates he’s made to the SHDMotWOW (Super-Huge Detailed Map of the World of Warhammer), an immense map he’s developed, that keeps getting bigger and bigger. It’s a fantastic resource for anyone playing any edition of Warhammer.

During this first part of the show, they spend some time speculating over the next release, how they think new mechanics will work, and the like. They’ve conceived of a few good mechanics that never saw fruition.

Following that, they will have their System Spotlight, where they discuss an aspect of the rules that makes it different than other RPGs. They’ve done a lot to explain certain aspects of the game I still didn’t quite understand. I still haven’t delved into the rules for magic, but their episode that covered that really helped me grok how the rules work.

They did a great series on the Chaos gods, in which they broke down how each of them worked. They still haven’t covered Slaanesh, but I imagine they’ll do that after the book for Slaanesh comes out, whenever that may be.

They devote a really good portion of their show to Q&A, which you can send in via their site, email, Twitter or Facebook. They really know their stuff, and seem to have researched everything a lot.

In the weeks between them recording, they post actual play podcasts of the published adventures, which they run on MapTools. I haven’t listened to much of those, because during the character creation episode, there was a guy who was breathing really, really heavily, and I knew I wouldn’t be able to continue to listen if it was like that. I really should listen to a more recent episode to see if that’s still the case.

If you have any interest in Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 3e, or are looking to get into it and find out what it’s all about, you should check out the podcast.

One of the things that stands out most about Warhammer Fantasy is the dice. You can’t just show up at the table with your good ol’ dice bag and get playing. The game comes with some very specific dice with lots of different symbols on them.

Elsewhere, you can find out what the symbols mean, and all about them. What I’d like to talk about is the ways they can be used in the storytelling aspect of the game.

When you roll the dice, you do so as a large pool, rolling up both the dice that benefit you, as well as those that are a detriment to you. And in doing so, you tell a story.

Say, for example, you’re making an attack and you’re rolling three characteristic dice, as well as two reckless dice. You roll a few challenge dice, as well as a misfortune die. What do the dice tell you? First of all, any successes you get on your characteristic dice represent your pure ability. If you succeed with those dice, that’s a sign of your raw physical and mental talent. If you fail, it’s due to your own physical limitations.

You also have your conservative and reckless dice, representing your current stance, mentally and physically. Your attribute dice shift between these two dice, representing you taking your physical and mental abilities and either focusing them and becoming more conservative, or losing your focus and becoming more reckless. As such, if you succeed with your conservative dice, it represents your patience paying off, while with your reckless dice, it represents you succeeding through reckless abandon.
Failure on either count represents either your timing being a little slow due to conservative patience, or simply being too reckless, and missing your mark.

The yellow expertise dice represent your training in a particular skill. They’re the only dice that get the option of rerolling, as well as the only dice that give you a critical hit.
Success through these dice could represent your training kicking in and helping, while failure represents the event somehow being outside your skills.

White fortune dice crop up a lot throughout the game, representing fortune favoring your actions. They’re given out with fortune points, or through the whims of the GM. Success through these dice represent Fate taking a hand in your actions, leading you to victory.
Failure represents fate abandoning your character, leaving them in the dust.

Then you’ve got the bad dice: Misfortune and Challenge.

Challenge dice are the purple ones, which represent the skill, toughness and mental abilities of the foe you’re facing. If these dice factor in to causing a failure, it’s due to the enemy’s talents, or the problem’s underlying challenges.

The misfortune dice are the black dice which represent fate actually working against you. If you lose a roll do to these dice, fortune frowns upon you.

So how do we pull all of this together? Say you’re fighting a large orc (as per our last session), and you throw down some dice. Now, the orc gives you three purple challenge dice, and it’s raining, so you take a misfortune die. However, you are attacking using two characteristic dice, and you’re a little angry, so you’ve got a pair of reckless dice. Also, you’re skilled at sword-fighting, so you take an expertise die, and, though it’s raining, you have the higher ground, so that’s a fortune die. That’s ten dice you’re rolling there. Let’s see how it all plays out…

You throw the dice, coming up with no successes on your characteristic dice, two successes on your reckless dice, one on your expertise, and nothing on your fortune die. You receive one challenge on your challenge dice, and one on your misfortune die.

Now it’s up to you to figure out what cancels out what. Here’s how I’d do it: I’d place the two challenge dice under the reckless dice; As you move in to attack, your recklessness causes you to swing wildly, hitting their armor, while the rain blurs your vision. However, your skill in swordplay (the expertise die) allows you to slip your blade in at the last moment between the crude armor of the orc. A success!

As you can see, the dice are able to tell you a lot about how your character succeeds or fails, much more than a simple “plus-or-minus” in D&D or most other RPGs.

I’d like to spend some time talking about different aspects of Warhammer Fantasy, how they differ from traditional roleplaying games, and how you can use them in your game, whether in Warhammer or any other RPG.

First up, there’s the progress tracker. The progress tracker is something I haven’t seen as an official component of an RPG before, and it’s endlessly useful for any game.

Progress trackers are puzzle pieces you fit together to create lines, t-junctions, or other shapes. Most commonly, they’re used as a single line to monitor initiative order in the game, which works well. But there’s a lot more you can do with them.

There’s no need to track the wounds of each and every NPC combatant in the game. If you have an orc attacking a less-armed human (as happened in my last game), you set up a progress tracker, which advances every turn. If the players don’t stop the orc or distract him before the counter is advanced to the final point on the track, the man is dead. No wasting time rolling dice and figuring out how many wounds he’s taken.

Additionally, the tracker is incredibly useful in a chase. Imagine you’re chasing down a thief in the city of Altdorf. You place two counters a few spaces apart, and begin tracking the progress of both the players and the thief. If one of your players mentions wanting to find a way to cut off the thief, you can even branch off from the main tracker into another one, allowing them to find a way to get ahead of the thief.

Progress trackers are also useful for not saying anything. The PCs are walking through a graveyard. You place a tracker on the table, and slowly begin moving a token along the track each turn. The players don’t know what it’s for, but it can build a sense of growing dread. What happens when it reaches the end?

Now, how do you incorporate a progress tracker into your game of D&D or Dragon Age? Easy: use the battle mat you’ve got at your table, and draw a 1″-by-whatever length box you want along the edge of the mat, and use either spare miniatures or tokens to track the progress.

The progress tracker is something I haven’t seen as an official component of an RPG before, and it’s endlessly useful for any game.

If you end up using the progress tracker in your game, let me know. Or, if you’ve used it in your game before, how did you use it?

Okay, let’s get back on the blogging horse…

On Saturday night, I was able to gather the group together for our first session of Warhammer Fantasy. A couple of weeks ago, they sat down and made characters: a Human Coachman, a Dwarf Thief, and a Dwarf Watchman.

Yes, only three players. We’ve had some serious attrition, leaving only myself, Bridget, and two others. Bridget will be playing the male Dwarf Watchman.

Saturday morning, Bridget and I headed over to the FLGS, Unique Gifts & Games, and picked up three miniatures. I’m sad to say they weren’t Warhammer minis, as the price on those is… well, let’s say limiting. Also, no Dwarf Thief figures. So we picked up some Reaper Figures, two from their Warlord line, and another from their Dark Heaven.

Ed showed up a little early and we talked about Eclipse Phase and other things until Greg arrived. Bridget came down with a brutal headache in the afternoon, so she sat out. So we had two characters, the coachman and the thief. I read the following flavor text to the players to kick off the game:

The great Twin-Tailed Comet, a portent tied to both Sigmar and the Empire, has been seen in the sky. To some, it is a sign of hope. To others, the harbinger of doom. Tensions rise, as the effects of a ruthless winter and poor harvests are felt across the Empire. Villages and farms find it harder than ever to scrape by, and supplies for the Empire’s constant war efforts dwindle ever lower.

Can these brave few fulfill their destinies as Fate’s champions in this, the Empire’s time of greatest need?

The session began as I placed the Old Dirt Road and Forest Glade cards on the table, placing the two of them on the Old Dirt Road.

I said “You are travelling along the road towards Altdorf, capital of the Empire. Kutsher (the coachman) has been paid a silver shilling to take Gorni (the thief) to the capital to face the Emperor’s justice. Gorni, you are tied up, behind bars in the back of the coach.”

And that’s how it began. I let Greg decide what it was his character was wanted for, and the two had a bit of dialogue as the dwarf demanded he be let free.

Coming around a bend in the road, they came upon a merchant coach stopped in the road. On top of it, a goblin was throwing the trunks and boxes to the ground as a large, armored Orc attacked the coach’s driver. Other goblins milled about, picking through the trunks and throwing clothing about looking for valuables.

There was a bit of a discussion on whether they could go around or not, but it was a narrow road, and it would delay them by at least three days to find another route to the city.

The dwarf convinced the coachman to let him free so he could help, and they moved in. The dwarf hopped out and moved into the forest to sneak in, while Kutsher road the coach up, and fired his crossbow at the goblin on top of the other vehicle. A perfect hit, and the goblin toppled off, in between the orc and the beset human he was attacking. The orc turned and saw the other coach, bellowing “Get ‘im, boyz!” The goblins sprung into action.

I tried to fix the abstraction rules a little in the fight, by adding in a tic-tac-toe style board. I Google Searched “tic-tac-toe”, and came up with a suitable image, then printed it off at full-size on a piece of paper. The location cards for Warhammer fit perfectly within. To one side of the road was the forest, and to the other, a cliff side. I was hoping there would be some fighting on the cliff, as getting near it and performing actions can actually cause a player to fall to their death. Sadly, this side of the battlefield was mostly ignored.

Kutsher hid behind the coach, firing off his crossbow (which he had both trained and specialized in, giving him two extra dice) at the goblins moving in on him, while the orc continued to attack the man he was fighting. I set up a tracker and moved it every round to represent how badly the orc was beating the man. Within five turns, the NPC coachman would be dead.

It turns out, my players are kind of ruthless, and didn’t really care about the man, and used the tracker to let them know how long they had before they were going to need to deal with the orc.

The dwarf began fighting the goblins in the forest, where he attempted to climb a tree, and discovered why it is that dwarves aren’t forest-dwelling folk. His failure drew their attention, and he actually ended up taking on four of the buggers, taking some heavy wounds.

Kutsher moved into the forest, coming at the goblins from behind. Between the two of them, they were taken down quickly. Then, they heard the bellow of the orc. He had finished off the coachman, and was on his way to them…

Lumbering through the forest, the two prepared for his assault. The dwarf hid behind a tree, while the coachman prepared his blunderbuss.

The orc emerged, eight feet tall, and carrying an enormous choppa; not so much a sword, as a very large slab of metal. Rain began to fall hard, obscuring all of their vision. What followed was a long-winded fight. Using his sword, blunderbuss and crossbow, Kutsher attempted to keep his distance, while Gorni would move in, attack, and fall back. The orc got some heavy swings in, nickingKutsher and wounding Gorni even worse. Wearing the orc down, they decided to run.Kutsher loaded his crossbow and fired an immobilizing shot, hoping to pin the orc to a tree so they could run. There was no need. The orc had only one wound left, and the arrow sank into his eye, dropping him.

The last few goblins who were trying to break open the coach panicked and fled. Moving towards the coach, they heard whimpering within. They knocked on the door, and were greeted by a pig-faced man peeking out of the curtains. He was irate, and certain the two had killed his coachman. He told them he was a very important merchant from Marienburg, and very soon, a search would begin for him. While Kutsher spoke to him, trying to convince him they weren’t the ones who attacked him, Gorni found a locked chest dumped from the wagon, and picked the lock. Within, he found an elaborate dwarven horn. The merchant saw him with the chest, and began demanding the thief give it back, saying they’d both be prosecuted if he had anything to say about it.

Ed didn’t much like the idea of this merchant, having seen them, deciding they were criminals. “There’s a cliff off to one side of the road, right?” he asked me.

“Yeah,” I said.

“I smack the horses’ rumps, hard. I want to send the merchant over the cliff.”

I was speechless…

“Okay…” I finally said. “You can hear his screams all the way down to the bottom of the cliff.”

I honestly was not expecting that at all…

And that’s where we ended the session. I gave two XP to them for their first session. Ed decided that coachman may not be the job for him, and has actually found a couple of careers he can get for only two advances, including gambler, bounty hunter and hunter. He knows he’ll be in trouble with the law now that he’s not delivering a wanted criminal to them.

Greg is looking at the Slayer, but it’ll be a couple more sessions before he’s allowed to make the switch.

I’m really looking forward to seeing what these guys end up doing with their characters and where they’ll go.

On Friday or Saturday, we’ll be getting together again, when Bridget’s character will be introduced, the Dwarf Watchman. We’ll see how she fits into the story.

It was a great first session that really got everyone’s juices flowing and taught them the basics of the system, as well as how tough and brutal the world is.

When I was visiting my brother in Roseville, MN last summer, I had the opportunity to sit in on his Warhammer Fantasy RP campaign, ran by Adam Sadler, one of the guys who works at Fantasy Flight Games. Other players included my sister-in-law, one of the editors at FFG, Adam’s brother Brady, who has had his hands in a lot of FFG products, including some of the WHFRP stuff. I played Tristan Two-Coins, a Human Gambler from Marienburg, who spied in on the group and got himself ingratiated to them before they had to deal with a band of zombies (never good.)

What fascinated me about the session was actually the way he handled currency.

Throughout the WHFRP books, it talks about the three levels of currency as marks of wealth. Copper is for the common folk, silver for the merchants, and gold for the nobles. As such, it’s very, very difficult to, say, break a silver into copper. This was very apparent, when my brother, playing a Dwarf Ironbreaker, went into an inn, and only had silver on him. The innkeeper didn’t have enough copper to give him in change (and probably couldn’t do the math to make change if his life depended on it). The innkeeper told him he could have whatever he wanted for as long as he was staying. It was probably the first time the poor man had ever seen a silver, and would probably be the last. I can’t imagine what would have happened if someone had shown up with gold! Keep in mind, that a copper is roughly 1/100 of a silver (I don’t have the book in front of me at the moment).

So how can you incorporate this into D&D or other fantasy RPGs?
I think, using some techniques mentioned by Paul at Blog of Holding, which I discussed yesterday. If you made gold more expensive and rare, you could really make money almost another character in the game. If a hero waves around a single gold piece in a poor village, you can bet they’re going to get jumped, not by just one, but three or four gangs vying for that incredible wealth.

You also won’t be able to just say, “Well, I have ten silver, so I actually have one gold.” You don’t. You have ten silver. Same the other way. If you have a silver, you may be able to get it broken up into copper, but then again, perhaps a merchant doesn’t like having such a high value item in their possession. You’d most likely be playing this in a low-magic item setting, in order to really hone in on the fact that money is so valuable here.

Tomorrow, I’ll discuss bartering.