"The little dog bites! The sewer rat bites! The little dog bites!"

Randomly got the overwhelming urge to run Warhammer FRP this weekend. Without ever having run it before, or having read through the combat rules more than once like two years ago, or having played it more than 5 times (like about two years ago). Ran up the flag, ended up with 3 players for the evening. Luckily one of my guys has run it a couple times (and was amply capable of co-GMing), and it's actually pretty fucking light, rules-wise, so we pulled it off. Here's the quick and dirty:

SHORT AND SWEEET WFRP SESSION REPORT

Date: Current date is 2512 (10 years after the coronation of Karl Franz, 10 years before Storm of Chaos happens (or doesn’t))
Characters:
Otto – grave robber from Hochland
Gustav – rat catcher from Ostland
Bigtooth – dwarf tradesman from the Zhufbar (World’s Edge Mountains)
First session: PCs wake up, hung over, in a locked wagon, on their way to Middenheim, having been shanghaied into service as rat catchers after getting drunk at the Festival of St. Iverson in the village of Arenburg. They are held along with two thugs (Strigo and Piggy, brothers in arms if not in fact), and Hans (a bewildered young boatman, far from any river). Bigtooth starts a fight with Strigo, which quickly draws in Otto and Gustav (as well as Piggy), and the combatants pound each other until they are all exhausted (and soaked with foul stew by the guards). Finally they arrive at the great viaducts of Middenheim.
They are taken to a barracks, and from there (their promise of service obtained by Serjeant Fogelmann), to a sewer grate. They are put down in the shit, literally, and locked in, while an angry mob of rat catchers and dung sweepers advances on the watchmen above.
Bigtooth and Strigo immediately resume their earlier feud, only this time they are armed. A messy combat (again, literally) ensues, and both Strigo and Piggy are killed. (Strigo's leg was "demolished", and his skull then neatly bisected just above the mustache by the enraged dwarf's axe. Piggy, seeing this, slipped a gear, went berserk, and was cut down.) Meanwhile Hans and Otto look on with bewildered dismay. Eventually the remaining prisoners make their way down the sewer, bearing left at an intersection before the rat catcher’s small (but vicious) dog takes off after some prey. The party catches up, only to find more (and larger) rats than they’d bargained for. Bigtooth is nearly brought down by his wounds, everyone gets soaked in sewage, and only 1 rat is killed before the rest run off. So far, so good. [end session]

I'm psyched to run this, I've been curious about it since just about forever (WFRP was big at the FLGS I got started at as a lad), and the system seems like it just oozes awesome. Picking through the available material to determine what from the 2e run is worthwhile, and what is just rules bloat. *

Next time, I'll pick at their backgrounds a bit, dangle guild membership in front of the dwarf, and fuck with them a little bit more. Assuming they make it out of the sewer (it's not looking too good, even the small but vicious dog has broken ribs, haha).

- DYA

* It should go without saying that I'm running WFRP 2e, not the Descent-with-Skaven board game that FFG's hawking under the WFRP name, nowadays. Fuck that shit.