Tobcon 3

This was the first Tobecon that the 4th Edition rules were available so while there was a broad spread of rules systems the majority of the games were pitched at 4th Edition as people gave it a run.

What I played

Big Trouble in Little Kislev

This was a storyline loosely based on the film combined with yet another spirit needing regular female sacrifices. It used an adaptation of the Feng Shui rules which at least encouraged everyone to dive into character and start going after the storyline with gusto.

The story was another evil spirit being brought into the community by a well-meaning priest. The evil spirit was a traditionalist and therefore obviously required a female sacrifice periodically.

However as player characters we said: “Not today human sacrifice, not today” and duly we freed the hostages and ensured that the Kislevian fishermen faced the dangers of the sea than Manaan had intended for him.

In terms of the rules hack it seemed quite easy to fail when you weren’t doing your “special thing”. This meant you tended to have to pull your punches in the description of your action or maybe even roll before you try to do the narrative of the action.

The initiative countdown system was pretty good though with a pretty nice back and flow to the fights. We had a player managing the initiative track which felt like a good division of work too.

I’m not sure the system added something to WFRP for me but it definitely had its charms.

A rough night for a red wedding

Another Kislev tale with the characters being part of a group escorting a noblewoman to her wedding. There seemed to be two sub-plots weaving around the central story of the wedding. Firstly the question of whether the prospective groom was actually a living being or a kind of icy undead masquerading as human. Secondly the conflict between two witch sisters over this child.

No-one seemed much opposed to the wedding so that seemed pretty easy.

Then one of the attending priests died and initially I thought that maybe the bride to be would turn out to be a monster, in fact it was the groom who was the monster. A kind of undead rescued from the icy cold where his mother and twin died by a witch.

Much of the latter half of the scenario revolved around the conflict between the two witch sisters. One of whom believed that mercy had saved the young boy from his undead fate and the other who insisted that his death was overdue and would merely restore the balance of fate.

Some of the PCs ultimately decided to side with the witch advocating the death of the prince but as a servant much of the moral decision was happening “offstage”.

The story had a lot of character with sledges in the snow and outrageous Bretonnian choclatiers but ultimately it would have found it more enjoyable recast as a noble romance with some of the NPCs actually being PCs. One interesting twist on the basic idea would have been to have PCs from both families.

Rose Red

This is a kind of like the Witcher’s take on fairy tales. An evil stepmother, an estranged daughter, woodcutters, werewolves and magic mirrors.

It was probably more high-fantasy than most WFRP scenarios and I found the spying mirror quite creepy.

A GM suggestion that we regard the exaggerated character art provided as the mental image of the character rather than a literal representation (the wizard character was drawn like Gandalf but was only 22 years of age (rough life possibly, but it wouldn’t explain the navel-length beard)) led to us as players coming up with a unique take on how to play the characters. Our characters became battle-scarred veterans who had gone through a lot of therapy and mindfulness coaching. The typical party conversations were littered with encouragements to address our fear of the other, to wait for the talking stick and to not be discouraged when we failed to be our better selves. It was kind of like playing a woke Liam Neeson in the Taken films.

The underlying menace of people who had seen and done terrible things and were prepared to unleash serious violence if their requests were refused created a comic but serious underpinning that matched the scenario’s use of fairy tale tropes backed by grim fantasy.

Our characters were prepared to use radical empathy and murder to achieve their ends. And if came to violence we’d all had a lot of experience of processing our emotional reactions.

The game featured werewolves, enchanted villagers and witches hiding in plain sight. The blend of horror (child sacrifice, slain villagers) and comic absurdity was suitably Warhammer with a fine line walked between unpleasantness and ludicrousness.

The Dirty Half-Dozen

This game was a little unusual with six Dwarf Slayers going on a kill spree together. The structure was relatively straight-forward with a Nurgle Daemon poisoning the land with its corruption and therefore causing various monsters to become sick and to flee their normal hunting grounds for lands unaffected by the plague.

The game literally followed the traditional Slayer path with corrupted Trolls, followed by a corrupted Giant, followed by a corrupted Dragon, followed by the Daemon itself.

There was a competitive element to the game in terms of being the first Slayer to die a glorious death but in the end all the Slayers made it to end only to be overwhelmed by the Demon and its spawn.

Other games on offer

Obviously I don’t know as much as the other games that were played but from the pub chat at the end of the first day there was a scenario that was a kind of sequel to an earlier convention game and which seemed to feature 24-esque elements of torture horror along with a clever plot to lure the adventurers out of hiding.

I also think Toby ran one of his traditional floorplan and miniature games.

Final thoughts

This year was dominated by the release of the 4th Edition rules but there was still a good spread of systems and some people are 1st Edition till they die. As part of that reboot feeling there was something about coming back to the core of the dark fantasy of the original game. Magic and the supernatural were important in virtually every game I played but none of it was conventional high fantasy.

There were a number of drop outs, which was a shame as I think there was a range of experienced and imaginative GMs offering games that aren’t just your standard ratcatcher and barge pastiches.