Grimvember 2019 is here! "Everybody's Talking at Me" rocks my world!
It's that time of the year again! The fourth edition of Grimvember is here, and so, throughout the whole month, I will be reviewing some of my favorite WFRP modules, both official and fan-made.
This year we're starting strong, with one of my favorite adventures of all time - "Everybody's Talking at Me"! Penned by Georgios Panagiotidis, this scenario takes place in a small, sleepy village of Nordfels, that had just been shaken up by a brutal murder of a certain halfling entertainer. With this unfortunate's grisly demise, the town became a boiling point of resentment, paranoia and suspicion. The heroes are offered a job of Schlichters, arbitrators whose job is to settle various arguments between the memebers of Nordfels' community, and to difuse the tense atmosphere, before the village tears itself apart.
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| It's not as peaceful, as it looks! |
WARNING! Minor spoilers ahead.
Panagiotidis' short scenario is a perfect example of how well can a simple premise work - there's no grand scheme by a vile chaos cult (although some of Nordfels' citizens are not whom they seem at first...), no imminent threat, looming at the horizon, no Archaon knocking at village's door with his spiky mates. Instead there' s a distrust between different neighbors, paranoia, long held grudges and passions. "Everybody's Talking at Me" is a fantastic insight into a small, Old World community, where many things are hunky-dory only at a first glance. People are often hiding shameful secrets, and hold grudges towards their fellow man (and non-humans as well, which this scenario clearly shows), and sooner or later, the built-up tension must find a release...
I think that I like this scenario so much, because it's perfect as a sort of "breather" between bigger adventures. It lets the players relax, take things more slowly and methodicaly, and it's very light on combat, so a TPK is practically out of the question. Another great thing about "Everybody's Talking at Me" is the fact that it forces the PC's to think very carefuly, and consider all of the options, before making a judgement. In that regard this scenario is very similar to the, equally excellent, "Heralds of Woe", another favorite one-shot of mine. If you want to challenge your players with a game, which doesn't only revolve around fighting, casting and generally using dice more than brains, then this little gem of a adventure is just a thing for you.
I wholehearteldy recommend "Everybody's Talking at Me". It's a solid, well written scenario, and you should all give it a chance. I've only ran it once, a couple years back, but I plan to repeat the experience in the future, definitely a few more times.
Until next time!
Xathrodox86
I can’t find this adventure online. Any suggestions?
ReplyDeleteYou'll find it here, together with a lot more, fan-made stuff. I update this collection twice a year. Next update will be in December. https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B78tEyor-_2DdU9TLTVUaW5VMjg
DeleteI see that you had a great experience running Everybody's Talking at Me - and I'm happy you did! - but after reading it from beginning to end, I'm afraid that says more about your skills as a GM than about the author's skill at presenting a scenario...
ReplyDeleteEssentially, he offers three separate adventure hooks tied to an anonymous small town, connected by an extremely shaky premise (the PC group being engaged as Schlichters). He spends 14 pages on not really fleshing those hooks out in a particularly useful way - there are no maps or building plans; there is no detailed characterization of the important PCs; there isn't even a convincing explanation what exactly is going on in 2 of the 3 hooks - and the one where the author gives us a somehow extensive explanation has lots of issues:
Wouldn't Sieglinde have noticed the fight directly under her window? Wouldn't someone have heard Karel's cries for help, and would the dog not have barked? While respecting the intent to convey dark irony, how absurd is it that those men, no matter how inebriated, did not recognize a close friend wearing his usual clothes who spoke to them and called them by their names?
We're also not given any information about Karel which one needs to conduct an investigation, including his home and personal life, and what exactly he was doing during his days and with whom. (So, he was an entertainer - but that doesn't say a lot by itself.) It also seems really unlikely that Karel's killers would divulge the truth to a group of outsiders. And then there's this burglary background story which definitely needed to get developed, but wasn't at all. That is sinply way too litle information even for an investigative mini-scenario.
The Alchemist hook is at least somehow plausible, although at the same time pretty cliched, but on the plus side that enables the GM to fill in the gaps in its background. However, I'm not sure if a single Gor (which is even chained up for the first 3 rounds of combat!) is really such a challlenge fora group of 4-5 adventurers. Its stats certainly do not support that.
The Kaufmann hook makes no sense at all to me. Why would Goblins sell anything to humans for gold? How much use are occasional carts of rotting meat actually in providing a town with an economical upswing? How does Kaufmann get that cart through those explicitly trackless woods? (And why are there no tracks if three people regularly draw a cart through the area?) Why would the goblins attack them if they spot the PCs and fear a trap, instead of simply just not showing themselves? And would none of Kaufmann's men spill the beans by refusing to eat the meat that Kaufmann introduces into Nordfels? Nothing about this makes any sense.
(A character limit of 4096? Really? Also, I thought I was logged in - that's what the screen said, at least. This is Andreas, obviously.)
ReplyDeleteThe author somehow manages to fill those 14 pages with an elaborate, but obviously very artificial (on which he even comments himself) introduction; with a lot of detailed, but utterly uninteresting suggestions about which rolls to make when (one highlight here are the findings of 1d10 gold and 2d20 silver at the alchemist's home); with providing lots of boring modifiers to conduct the trial, which should have been the climax of the scenario, in an abstract way; and in general with a lot of bad English, and text that didn't see a proofreader.
What he doesn't do is give the GM enough useful, well-researched information to even justify reading through the whole thing. Unless a GM has really no ideas of their own at all, this piece should not be of any value to them - their time would have been better spent brainstorming their own scenario.
I'd told you that I originally immediately weeded this piece out on the basis of its subpar presentation. Then I saw your blog entry praising it and decided to give it a chance - but it turns out it is even worse than I had suspected! Note that a few good maps and detailed NPC descriptions go a long way towards making even a badly-thought out scenario valuable for a GM, since that means that at least some work has been done for them, even if they have to redact the given plot majorly. But then again, there is usually a correlation between authors who put in the time to supply such GM aids, and those who put in the time to construct plausible plots - and this scenaro did not turn out to be an exception here.
It's not perfect, sure. That said, for me and my players it was fun, and in the end it's all that matters. The flaws that you've mentioned are valid. So are the myriad flaws in the "The Enemy Within" and every, single official campaign for WFRP. I personally don't mind, flaws sometimes make the game more entertaining. Why did the goblins needed the gold? Who cares! Maybe they had to buy a service of a bunch of ogres? And the drunk guys and a halfling - when you're really drunk, your mind stops working correctly. Also most people in the Old World would not look out of the window, if they heard someone getting killed right before their homes. In my run-through the trial was a very climactic and enjoyable moment of the story, and I've run this scenario by-the-books. Like I've said before - every adventure, campaign, sourcebook, etc. has flaws. If you can look past some of them, and find the cool stuff, you'll be happier. That's what I've been doing for the past decade or so, and I've never regreted it.
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