Review of the Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay free intro adventure Night of Blood, originally written by Jim Bambra, updated and edited for Cubicle 7’s 4e by Lindsay and Andy Law.
In Short: A quick and easy yet appropriately gritty and bloody adventure to introduce a new group to WFRP, or to slot into an ongoing campaign as a (very) brief travel interlude, though it may need beefing up for advanced players or characters.
Spoiler-lite for Players and GMs
Night of Blood is likely the first place brand new players will experience Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, being free, short, easy to run for the GM, and leading nicely into the fourth edition Starter Set. And it really is a perfect place to introduce players to the Old World and WFRP 4e, showing off the darkness, horror, a few key elements of the setting to build off of, and of course, some dark humour. I can’t get into specifics of the scenario without heading into spoilers right away, but suffice to say it takes the classic ‘adventurers meet in a tavern’ set up and puts a charming Warhammer spin on it. It’s also something of a classic starter scenario along with the famed Oldenhaller Contract, similar to Call of Cthulhu’s The Haunting.
As mentioned before, and fitting for an introduction, the scenario takes up only seven pages (plus one repeat full page map), including stat blocks and a handful of nicely drawn sketch portraits. A GM-facing map of the inn is also included, and like all Andy Law-era cartography, it is splendid (not to say that post-Law cartography is bad, it certainly is not, but Andy’s detailed maps have a definite charm to them). Playthroughs generally clock in at three to four hours, though there are plenty of opportunities for it to end sooner, while extending it would require some extra work.
Night of Blood is clearly aimed at new players and less experienced Characters. More experienced players could definitely still enjoy it, though it they’d likely roll through it very easily. In particular, Characters later on in their careers are likely to make short work of everything it has to throw at them. If slipping Night of Blood into an ongoing campaign, it would benefit from some expanding or beefing up to give more of a challenge. I have some ideas in the following spoiler section.
Overall, there isn’t much of a reason not to try out Night of Blood unless you have another introduction already in mind. It’s perfectly attuned to new players, and unlike The Oldenhaller Contract which needs both converting to 4e and a bit of elbow grease to run smoothly, Night of Blood is extremely easy to run straight off the page. I could also see it easily converted into other fantasy systems (ala D&D, Pathfinder, or OSR stuff like DCC or MÖRK BORG) or horror systems (besides a rewritten introduction and stripping out the Warhammer specific setting, rules-wise it could largely be run as-is in Cthulhu Dark Ages, or even a countryside setting for classic 1920s Call of Cthulhu).
The Night of Blood pdf can be downloaded for free from DriveThruRPG or Cubicle 7’s website.
Before you go, maybe you would be interested in some of the below reviews or replays?
MJRRPG scenarios, Chaosium-released scenarios, Miskatonic Repository scenarios, Japanese scenarios
The structure of Night of Blood is very simple, but allows for very different approaches between parties and gives GMs tools to adjust the core mystery to suit their players’ attentiveness. The adventure is at its core a mystery, but one that inevitably ends in bloodshed.
The party starts on the road during a storm, stalked by beastmen, before finding shelter at a nearby inn. Some parties might be inclined to fight the beastmen, but GMs should be able to shuffle all but the most suicidal parties onwards with enough warnings or with progressively difficult beastmen attacks. Something is off at the inn, though. The outer gates are locked, as is the inn door. When its occupants finally open the door, its obvious (or at least should be) that not all is as it should be.
In truth, the inn’s proprietor and patrons are either tied up or dead in the cellar, and a number of mutants and a cultist are masquerading as them while they prepare for a Chaos ritual to summon a daemon. They aren’t particularly good at it, acting brusque to the characters and leaving all manner of obvious blood stains around, with only one, the cultist, having the charisma and presence of mind to convincingly act like the Road Warden he is disguised as.
I would suggest not asking players unprompted to make any Perception or Intuition tests to spot blood stains or sense the NPCs intensions. If they ask for generic tests, by all means, or if they ask about something in particular, they could be given the pertinent information without a roll. Simply acting the NPCs as written should clue off most players that they shouldn’t be trusted, but in the off chance they do simply go along with things, with a little adjusting they could get to see a pretty fun ending.
As written, the mutants dose the party’s food with a sleeping drug. If they eat the food without question, they fall unconscious, and the mutants are free to conduct their ritual. The adventure oddly doesn’t give any ability for the characters to wake up, though GMs could find an excuse rules-wise to break the Unconscious condition, or fudge them waking up. I’d personally suggest having the unconscious characters be loosely tied up and dragged into the cellar, ‘and when the mutants begin the ritual some Chaos-fueled nightmare wakes the characters up (maybe along with a cheeky Corruption point) just in time to see a hostage NPC be sacrificed. As the mutants didn’t think the party would wake up soon, the ropes aren’t particularly tight, allowing the characters to slip out with an Average Strength test, or some other creative method. As they untie themselves or start sneaking away, the daemon is summoned, and tears apart the cultist and mutants before turning its attention on the remaining captives.
Most parties won’t get that far, which is entirely fine and probably ideal. I would do my best as a GM to have the cultist, or at least one mutant, slip away from any combat to go downstairs and begin conducting the ritual to summon the daemon. If they don’t there is still a chance for it to make its appearance as the characters need to smash an idol in a single hit to avoid the daemon appearing. A particularly nasty GM could have the daemon appear even if the idol is destroyed, maybe with reduced Wounds as a consolation (or with a Stunning explosion, if you want to be a bastard).
For more experienced parties, the beastmen from the beginning could chose this moment to make another assault, breaking into the inn compound to retrieve the idol for themselves. Alternatively (or additionally), the cultist could be made a magic user, putting the mutants between the party and himself so he could throw a few nasty spells into the mix.
Night of Blood is all around very simple to run, but still offers enough chances for events to play out in unexpected ways to make for an engaging session for the GM. Once again, I fully recommend it as an introduction to a new WFRP campaign, or as a low-prep interlude during travel for an ongoing campaign.
The Night of Blood pdf can be downloaded for free from DriveThruRPG or Cubicle 7’s website.
Before you go, maybe you would be interested in some of the below reviews or replays?
MJRRPG scenarios, Chaosium-released scenarios, Miskatonic Repository scenarios, Japanese scenarios
