It's Grimvember time! "The Lord of Lost Heart" is coming for you!

Grimvember continues with another entry. This time I'll be writing about one of my favorite, fan-made adventures of all time, "The Lord of Lost Heart".


There are many, fantastic fan supplements for WFRP, but for me the best ones are always scenarios and campaigns. For many years I've struggled with writing my own stories, so I took any chance to run a well written adventure. Some of them were good, others less so, but a few were real gems. Among those is "The Lord of Lost Heart" by Pip Hamilton, a scenario for 2nd edition WFRP, which takes place right after the Storm of Chaos in the village of Hohlesbruck. It won an award in the Strike to Stun's 2009 Scenario Contest, and rightfully so. Seriously, this adventure is all kinds of awesome.

Unfortunately there's no official cover, so here are some creppy trees. Trust me, you'll see many of them in this adventure
Naturally I'll avoid spoilers, so you'll be able to enjoy it fully, once you'll play it yourselves. "The Lord of Lost Heart" is everything a WFRP scenario should be - a dark, gritty and grim tale of love, loss and despair, so common for Warhammer Fantasy. The adventurers are tasked with investigating the small community for a man, that they've met in a tavern (of course) some time earlier. It soon becomes obviouse that the village of Hohlesbruck houses many a dark secret, and that not all is as it seems. A girl with broken heart, a handsome, but vain young Pistolier, a prosperant but greedy merchant with huge ambitions and a disgruntled son - these are only some of the interesting and complex characters, that the PC's will be able to encounter, during their stay in town. "The Lord of Lost Heart" is pretty unique, when it comes to solo scenarios, for its portrayal of NPCs. I don't think that I've ever seen such complex, many layered and interesting characters in any WFRP supplement, except maybe huge, multi-layered campaigns, like the "Thousand Thrones" or "The Enemy Within". For Hamilton to give his NPCs such a depth of character is truly unique and fantastic. The villians are interesting, and certainly not one-dimensional, "ha ha ha I'm evil, lol" type of bad guys. This is a very nice change, from the usual megalomanicas, dark and brooding cultists or crazy warlocks.

The Hohlesbruck's citizens are varied in their characters and motivations, and almost all of them have something to hide, some dirty little secret, that could ruin them, if it ever came to light. One can never know if the pretty girl that he is speaking with, dosen't have a bunch of skeletons in her closet, perhaps literally...

The story itself is well paced and clearly written. There won't be any problems with preparations for the game and I always remembered where to look, when searching for certain details. That's not always the case, mind you, so again - big thank you to Pip Hamilton for doing such a good work with his document.

While "The Lord of Lost Heart" is excellently written, it is also rather difficult and demanding of players to complete successfully. Again, I don't want to spoil anything, but needless to say that both the enemy encounters, and puzzles, can be very challenging, even for an experienced group of adventurers. Gamemasters are advised to scale their sessions accordingly, or they can suffer a Total Party Kill. In fact, they can suffer more than one, when I think about it. My group actually did rather well, since only one or two lost a Fate Point, but in the end they did not managed to achieve the positive outcome. So you know, be prepared for a hard time with this one, or accept that the heroes do not always win.

"The Lord of Lost Heart" is simply wonderful. It's a great, smart, well written scenario, ideal for a campaign filler or a memorable, stand alone game. I think it might be my favorite WFRP scenario, ever made. It's in the top 3 for sure and I reccomend it to anyone who even has a slight interest in both WFRP, and role-playing in general. Unfortunately it's not available for download anymore, or at least I can't find it. However I do have it stashed on my hard drive, so if anyone would want it, send me a mail, and I'll be more than happy to supply you with this incredible gem of a adventure.

Oh and yeah, I know that there was a week without a promised Grimvember post, but don't worry - when the November comes to an end, there will be 4 posts in total, one for each week. Just some serious, IRL problems came to the fore and I had to deal with them. Happens to all of us.

Oh and there will be a small surprise for all of you, at the beginning of December. Below is a small sneak peek...

Oh yeah, it's on now
Until next time!

Xathrodox86

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

The End Times: what went wrong? - part 2. Swearing intensifies

Xathrodox86 reviews: "Mordheim: Warband Skirmish" (don't play this game!)

Heroes of the elven hosts. The final part of "End Times: Khaine" review is here!