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.

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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.