Shadows Over Bogenhafen

[Steve of the Red Fez]

Has anyone converted this adventure to 3E? If not then maybe I'll do it. If so, can someone send me a copy?

[Philippe Boujon]

No, but if you do, I am taker! I'd love to run the original Enemy Within in 3rd ed, although I think it would have a very different feel. There is a discussion about it on the FFG board.

WFRP1st ed characters were not as heroic as 3rd edition, so the Enemy Within 1st edition is assuming a lot of failure, wonderful for the story though. In 3rd edition, those failures would rarely happen, and the few encounters would need to be beefed up... or the group of heroes would need to be forced to be more common.

On Wed, Mar 6, 2013 at 3:49 PM, Steve of the Red Fez <sjpau...@gmail.com> wrote:

Has anyone converted this adventure to 3E? If not then maybe I'll do it. If so, can someone send me a copy?

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[Steve of the Red Fez]

Actually, I just finished reading it last night. The last time I read it was well over 20 years ago! It has very little combat overall so I don't see much of a problem with encounters. If you want it to be more gritty then simply do not treat any foes as henchmen; this will make it a lot more like original Warhammer, though combat will be slower (again, just like original Warhammer). Actually, some players may get annoyed that there is so little combat in the adventure. There are literally 2 or 3 potential fights within the core storyline, and only one of those has anything approaching a "big fight scene" feel. All others tend to be random "flavor" encounters (example: a thief picks your pocket) or are results of the players looking for trouble (example: you could potentially find the thieves guild and, if you do everything wrong, you could end up being murdered and thrown in the river).

Some stuff actually ages pretty badly (for example, the sewers are treated somewhat like a AD&D dungeon crawl with random monsters and encounters; I think most modern WFRP gamers would think encountering a non-plot related giant amoeba--no, really, I didn't make that up--would be pretty wacky), but that stuff is very easy to update. This stuff only ages badly because adventure design has matured a lot since then. In fact, I think the key to updating this adventure is really in updating the presentation of information and streamlining the overall adventure. The actual mechanics are the easy thing to update.

One thing I would purposely change would be the design of the actual investigation since it is the heart of the entire adventure. I ran this adventure twice when I was younger and it really holds back most of the clues the players will need to figure out the mystery. At no point in either run did anyone really know what was going on, which was typical of mystery adventures of that time period. I think I would give the entire thing the same treatment I gave "An Eye For An Eye" with respect to the clue cards I had designed (I'm pretty sure you guys have seen them. If not I can send them to Phillipe to make available).

One tricky element would be the integration of this adventure into the wider original "Enemy Within" campaign. Despite our memories of it, the original series actually treated each adventure as a very seperate entity. Shadows Over Bogenhafen stands alone a bit too much. It's connections with the previous adventure (Mistaken Identity) is very loose. Shadows also leaves almost no real adventure trail to follow into the next adventure (Death on the Reik).

Thoughts?

[Ceodryn]

Yes, each book was really an adventure by itself. I haven't read the new Enemy Within so I wouldn't be able to comment about that. 

So, you mention all those things that have aged badly however... isn't it part of the fun? It obviously depends for who you are converting that, for for me, as a previous GM of the original Enemy Within, I would actually want to keep the feel very much the same, the wackyness and randomness. 

Your cards for EfE were indeed a great idea, and it would be very useful for SoB since there is so much information that can be discovered or stumbled upon. (By the way, if you don't have a dropbox, then yes send me the cards and I can post them here).

Now, I havent read it either for 20 years so.... In any case, I am looking forward to what you end up creating Steve.

[Kilsern]

When I finish up Edge of Night with my face to face group, I am looking to launch them into Death on the Reik. I've read thru it and see few problems. Most of the conversion will be done on the fly.