Month / November 2021

by guyeatsfood

Great Train Journeys – In Defence of the Railroad

Last weekend, at Grogmeet, I found myself apologising as my One Ring 2e game started –

I’ve adapted this from the Starter Set adventures… it might be a bit linear…

Many of my one-shots are, I realise. Read prep posts here and you’ll find discussions of scenes, pre-planned for trad games, that often take place in a set order. I think I run a lot of railroads at cons. 

While you’re reading this, I should tell you about my Patreon. Patrons get access to content 7 days before they hit this site, the chance to request articles or content, and the chance to play in one-shot games, for a very reasonable backer level. If you like what you read, want to support the blog, and have the funds for it, please consider supporting here.

So, should I be apologising? Well, no – because first of all, a good railroad knocks the socks off a poor sandbox – it’s easier to pace and easier to prep if you know where the game is going. Also, there are some ways to make your railroad much less railroady, so your players don’t feel they’ve been shoehorned into a plot. Here are my top tips for making linear one-shots better.

An actual railroad track. Don’t use this.

Multiple Resolutions

If you need scenes to happen in a set order, give each scene a flexible way to resolve it. For example, if your investigators have to find out that the Hell’s Angels were hired to threaten your murder victim, consider how the players can

  • Beat up on them to get their respect
  • Trick the information out of them
  • Negotiate with them for the clue

Come up with three ways to resolve the scene, and make each one exciting – but be open at the table to other reasonable requests; the thinking about different ways will make it easier for you to respond to other unexpected ways at the table.

Be flexible about scene transitions (what Robin Laws in Feng Shui 2 calls ‘connective tissue,’ too – have multiple ways to get to the next set piece scene, that can happen in a few ways. A 13th Age montage, or One Ring’s Journey system, are good approaches for this – as they create unpredictability, either from the players or the dice.

Flexible Ordering and “the Swell”

Another way to mix up the railroad and make it feel less linear is, well, to make it less linear. While you might have a clear idea of the start and end of your session, and possibly a key scene in the middle, intersperse this with scenes that can take place in any order.

So the players encounter the bandits raiding the village and fight them (KEY SCENE), learn of an opposing force massive to strike on the village (CONNECTIVE TISSUE), then recruit allies and prepare the village defenses (FLEXIBLE SCENES), then fight off the attack (KEY SCENE).

For the flexible scenes, it can help to think of them as short challenges, and think of a ‘normal approach’ (which might just be a simple skill check or challenge) that will get it done. Combine this approach with the one above – with multiple approaches for each task likely to be successful. Chain this between three key scenes, and you’ve got yourself an epic adventure. The example above was largely the plot of @the_smart_party ‘s Deadlands game I played at Grogmeet, where we foiled an actual railroad – following the mass battle (Savage Worlds, it turns out, has a great abstracted mass battle system) we tracked the real villain into his cult and fought him as a final key scene. 

Make Them Pop

The truth is, if your scenes are really entertaining, and transitions between them logical, nobody will care that they are linear. In a campaign, yes, you’ll find this unsatisfying after a couple of sessions, but in a one-shot the strong pull of a linear plot will keep everyone engaged.

Make sure each scene has some genuine stakes though – maybe they make subsequent scenes easier or harder, or feed into the final confrontation. Scenes do still need stakes, and you need to find a way to do this when the scenes that follow are pre-determined. And, whatever you do, don’t start the session sharing a map with one road going one way – a literal railroad out for everyone to see.

This was all I did with One Ring – the starter set has 5 adventures, so I stuck together two of them and tried to stick to the best bits and Spend Hope that the players enjoyed themselves – and I think they did.

What are your views on the railroad? Is anyone going to rush to the defense of the sandbox? Either way, let me know in the comments.

by guyeatsfood

Rough Games and Hard Fights – How To Run WFRP (4e) One-Shots

I’ve had a chance recently to run a few one-shots of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, at both Furnace and online, and it’s a game with a lot of love from the UK RPG community especially. It’s a great example of grim low fantasy, and as such takes a careful hand to run a satisfying one-shot of it. So, here are my top tips for delivery.

While you’re reading this, I should tell you about my Patreon. Patrons get access to content 7 days before they hit this site, the chance to request articles or content, and the chance to play in one-shot games, for a very reasonable backer level. If you like what you read, want to support the blog, and have the funds for it, please consider supporting here.

Take out the safety net

WFRP is deadly, and brutal. To help ensure their continued existence, PCs have one-shot Fate and Resilience points, that let them cheat death or avoid a mutation respectively. These are very limited-recovery, and are part of the game balance of starting characters (humans get loads of them, elves get very few – but have generally better starting attributes).

In a one-shot, remove these. Keep the per-session resources, Fortune and Resolve – they’ll need them to survive – but take the Fate and Resilience off. When I’ve run it, I’ve asked the players to cross them off their character sheets – this gives (a) a clear message that this game could be deadly, and (b) makes them more conscious of the Fortune and Resolve points which they might want to spend.

Flavour is everything

WFRP is a game of grim, dirty humanity in a losing battle against corruption, goblinoids, and foul magics. Although it’s got its fair share of monsters and traditional antagonists, a lot of WFRP’s aesthetic comes from human failures – even chaos thrives as a result of humanity surrendering to its temptations. The noble houses are corrupt and terrifying while the peasantry toil in back-breaking labour. You get the idea.

With this in mind, use the excellent source material for this – WFRP is not a game that works without the Old World behind it. The publications  from Cubicle 7 are dripping in flavour – use them liberally. If I’d recommend one purchase beyond the core book, I’d go with the Starter Set for a plot hook-sprinkled guide to the city of Ubersreik.

Combat is rare, and dangerous

A bad roll – or a good one – can be the end of a fight, for either side. In a recent con game, the PCs triumphed largely due to their main opponent (a skaven leader) fumbling their attack. It could have gone the other way just as easily. Combat also involves tracking Advantage, which means that once things start to go badly (or well) for a combatant, the odds begin to be stacked in their favour. For Advantage in a F2F game, I used some Campaign Coins – online I’ve used a token that explains what it is as well.

For this reason, outside of the final confrontation of the one-shot, don’t worry about making your combats pushovers. A few humans (WS 30) with a dagger (damage SL+4 for you S 30 thugs) will still feel dangerous for your PCs when one good hit can make a mark on them. For the final confrontation, feel free to throw stuff at them, but bear in mind that numbers (because of the Advantage rule) and size make a big difference to players. I’ve run Slaughter in Spittlefeld three times so far and the final confrontation, with a single underpowered vampire, is consistently perilous.

Use the Published Stuff

WFRP is rare among trad games in that it comes with loads of ready-made adventures that are either one-shots already, or easily adapted.

Night of Blood is a classic spooky inn ‘mystery’ where things start horrific and just get worse – I’ve run this at least three times, and would recommend. In the Ubersreik Adventures supplement, Slaughter in Spittlefeld is the most obvious one-shot for a tight con game – the PCs are locked in a tenement and have to solve it’s problem – but Mad Men of Gotheim and If Looks Could Kill are also great con-length one-shots.

And there’s a pdf-only One Shots of the Reikland supplement, too – I’d suggest these might need framing scenes beforehand to give a satisfying con experience, but it’s usually easier to add than take away. To run Curd Your Enthusiasm, I added a scene at the start where they meet Tomas, their patron, when they both he and one of the PCs are pickpocketed by a pair of thieves in Ubersreik – a chase ensues, and it serves as a good system- and character-intro to get everyone ready for the cheese-based investigations that ensue.

So, WFRP has become one of my go-to one-shot systems, and one I’ll certainly stay with. I keep musing about running the classic Enemy Within campaign – especially now it’s been rebooted by Cubicle 7 – but I think it remains a solid one-shot game, just simple enough – but fun enough – to give a satisfying experience.