Warhammer: Under a Giant Shadow of Pain

So here she be. I have been running a pretty much seat-of-my-pants Warhammer RPG campaign for a couple months now. It's every other week so I have time to think through the random junk my players decided to do last session and figure out a way to try to kill them in an interesting and glorious fashion, all while at work. My job allows for this. I've got 4 players, which is the most this sort of campaign can withstand, and all but one I've GM'd before. That helps.

The campaign has no official title, but I think the one I devised for this post will fit nicely. I basically started out by suggesting to players that we make a fun, D&D style romp without using the d20 system, which I think we all hate for various justified and unjustified reasons. So to that end I allowed them to chose any race, and any basic career and then gave them a few months wages and 1500 XP. This is what we got in the finish:

An Estalian Diestro-Duelist with a best quality floppy hat.
A Dwarf Runebearer-Sergeant that runs as fast as an Elf.
A Norse Berserker-Sergeant that tries to tell stories but mostly hits things with his big axe.
And a Brettonian Centigor Knight of the Realm-Knight Errant who acts noble despite his evil heritage.

An interesting thing of note for the setting is that none of these characters are native to the Empire which they are traveling in. Also Centigors (unlike their calmer Narnian counterparts, Centaurs) are fully evil beastmen that are trying to constantly bring the forces of chaos into power over the Empire.

Of course with such an assortment of characters I was forced to have them meet in a pub/inn. It also had to be in a small town because you should never give players too many options in the first session, it's just uncontrollable. So, the villagers decided the Centigor was due to be burned, just for being a beastman, despite gallant attempts at diplomacy. Attempts were also made to distract the villagers, and to batter down walls, and to steal anything not nailed down. No attempts were made to put out the fire set to the inn, or to rescue the poor, innocent innkeeper from a terrible death in the ensuing inferno. An agitator in the mob was killed in one swing of an axe and the townsfolk sent running. Then the players sent their characters running into the hills, all but one at least who got a nice backhand from the leader of a patrol of Sigmarites, who thought he was being unhelpful finding the villains responsible.

And thus the party was split 3:1, not the ideal end for the first session.