Running Zweihander: A GM's Take on an Old World Revisited

Recently I have had the chance to run a game with a group of friends. As I have grown older, and thus carry more responsibilities. Opportunities to run a game are thin, as those that are interested in playing have established groups, whereas other friends simply aren't interested anymore, or never were in the first place. I then was faced with the decision of which game to choose. I gave thought to running Warhammer 3rd edition, because even though the game (In my opinion) suffers bloat after the first career or two, there is a certain charm in the game at lower levels. I soon found though, like one can start to miss an ex-girlfriend, trying to make it work again can be more effort than you bargained for. I started pouring through the material again, and realized that it wasn't the game, it was me.

I normally like creating my own world and storyline, but that does seem to take more effort than I had the time for. I looked at a lot of the campaigns for 3rd edition, and although they were excellent campaigns, I wanted an even quicker solution than converting the campaign(s) with what I knew from the beta materials. Then came the "Grimdark" new beta version. With these new versions rolling out in our play-test group, I felt the game was starting to become strong enough for me to run on my own. I mentioned this to Daniel (the designer), and he informed me of a module that he had converted, and sent me the materials to use for myself.

What I would like to focus on are the various methods of play presented in the game, outside of normal role-play: Wilderness travel, Chase scenes, Social intrigue, and of course, Combat! The rest of the game, outside of these four aspects, can vary greatly, depending on the group dynamic. Anything from highly politicized mysteries, Kick in the door beer and pretzels brawlers, to all levels between will flavor the rest of the game moreso that any system will in my experience.

Wilderness Travel
Where some GMs excel greatly at making the journey from point A to B incredibly interesting, in this area I often fall short. Fortunately I usually have players with dynamic enough of personalities that travel wound up being interesting, but there were times where I found myself at a stark loss for words. "Yep, you guys are walking. There's a few trees along the way. Yep..." of all the times for me to become suddenly stumped. It was there, where others usually find it easy to come up with something. I also found that some players didn't really have much to do other than wait for the journey to progress. Whereas others, who are more akin to survival wilderness were taken for granted, or at the very least expected to perform their duties automatically.

In Zweihander, You can utilize different members of the party to perform different tasks. These tasks include being a guide, a scout, and a lookout. Everything about the journey can be abstracted with these three roles, and after determining the length of the journey, tests are made. These tests are determined by the role being played. The Guide will use navigation, the scout will use stealth, and the lookout will use awareness. Each test will eventually change the course of the journey, from determining how many provisions are used, how rough the journey will be (therefore increasing/decreasing the amount of toughness tests to be made to avoid Peril), to whether or not you are surprised if you trigger a random encounter. At the end of the tests being made, one player rolls a set amount of Chaos dice (also determined by one of the tests), and should one come up as a face 6, an encounter is triggered. The encounter doesn't have to be a fight necessarily, but could be a person in need or a traveling merchant, etc.

I found this system to be highly entertaining to me, and my players have also enjoyed having everyone being involved in the trip, while at the same time not allowing it to take forever and feel like a waste of time.

Chase scenes
For me, Chase scenes were often short, or handled like combat. If I had use of a board, I would put the person on the board and just run a combat scenario where the escapee only ran. I found that the characters either killed the escapee, or they got away too easily. For abstract play, it was only skill tests, so those who aren't particularly agile didn't have much to contribute to the chase. I had found some interesting ways to handle a chase before with 3rd edition, but again, longer term games became cumbersome for me.

Zweihander puts a chase scene in a structured format, yet makes it more streamlined than running a combat encounter (half of the times chase scenes can turn into combat, but that could be because of a table dynamic more than a system dynamic). At the beginning it is determined if the escapee(s) have a head start. If so, they are given an arbitrary number, then it begins. Each person rolls a d10 and adds their movement bonus to see if they catch up or fall behind. After a set amount of rounds, if the party has not caught up and subdued/hurt/what-will-you to the escapee, they escape. At first I thought Agility would remain king, and even though it is a boon, it's not all that counts. After a number or rounds equal to your brawn bonus, you have to make toughness tests or start to take peril damage. So both brawn and Willpower are important as well.

Social Intrigue
Another area that I often left to skill tests and looked at in black/white or success/fail situations, I often felt like those characters with social skills may have been left desiring more. While on one hand, trying to make a social encounter exactly the same as a combat encounter could cheapen role-play and sound arguments, on the other you could have the most compelling argument bungled by an unlucky role.

What Zweihander does differently, is it allows you to declare what your tactics will be before the discussion. I wish to gather information from him by offering him some of what I know, I wish to inform him his wife wouldn't appreciate learning of his indiscretions, or I want to become fast friends with him through jokes and carousing. This in turn would lead to a Bargain, intimidate and charm test by the respective players. Then, depending on the NPCs disposition, the success/failure of the party members, and what tactic used, a chart is referenced to give you guidelines for the NPCs reaction. So rather than a poor dice role trumping good roleplaying, or vice versa, the tests at the beginning of the intrigue color tone of the conversation. Example attitudes that could manifest include being cooperative, defiant, dismissive, fearful, and so on.

Lastly, Combat!
As a DM I find it difficult to create appropriate challenge levels in other games, because of the fact that some warriors know that they can't be killed unless they get hit at least four times at max damage. Therefore this encourages recklessness with a sense of impunity. I'm all for recklessness, don't get me wrong, but there's something to be said for a level of uncertainty that is always present. On the other hand, I remember one-shotting one of my players in another game simply because of low hit points of the player and a powerful character that was made to be a challenge for one of the "Tanks" of the group. Needless to say, he felt a little robbed, but this was understood that as players level, the game has to stack with them. When it gets to the point that it scratches warriors and obliterates wizards, you tend to stay in your role.

These roles do exist in Zweihander, if you look for them, but the gap isn't quite so painful. It isn't as painful because, well, combat is deadly for everyone. Everyone has the same Hit points, if you want to call them that, in that they are called the damage condition track. When you get hit, by in large you could expect to go down the track by one step. Seeing as how there are only six steps, and on top of it two are unharmed and Slain! (yes, the exclamation point is consistent with the game), there's not a lot of wiggle room. So one my wonder, well doesn't that enforce the notion that you could take a pre-defined number of hits before death? At first glance yes, but what determines a drop on the track is something called your damage threshold. Your brawn plus your armor gives it a numerical value, let's say, 6. If I take a d6, and add my combat bonus, I get my damage. If my combat bonus is three, and I roll a two, you suffer no damage. If I roll a four, and get seven you suffer damage and get moved down the track. If I roll a six, I get to roll the dice again. For every six damage over your threshold, you get knocked down an extra step. Top it off with conditional modifiers, such as charging adding an extra d6, and it is possible you could be killed in one blow. What I like about this so much, is that getting killed by one blow is pretty unlikely, but not so much that players feel invincible. Whereas it is unlikely enough that it feels fair. Pair that with every single rule across the board is the same for NPCs and players, and you can get some happy players on exploding sixes.

The game brings in other elements of play that no fantasy-setting-that-is-eerily-familiar-and-grim-dark-bad-wrong-fun game should be without, such as injuries, stunning blows, fate points, and black-powder weapons, but I find the level playing field, particularly in damage across the board for both sides to be refreshing. Combat is fast, tides turn at the drop of a hat, and more often than not, using tricks other than simply hitting it til it dies will make your hits even more effective.

Some final mechanics to cover quickly would be Order and Chaos Ranks, tied in with corruption and alignments. Alignments in this game choose two sides of the same coin, and rather than go by good or evil, ask you to determine if you are leaning on the side of Order and Chaos. For instance: If Enlightenment were order, then the Chaotic side would be Detatchment. The game doesn't view them as polar opposites to where you are either all or none, but rather a guide that you can use to color how your character would act in the best of times, or if they were distressed. Throughout the game, you will be assigned corruption points. These represent making tought decisions and rationalize the consequences. For example, you are looking for a criminal for a bounty, you've tracked them to their hideout, and they set it ablaze to escape leaving some victims inside. Do you give chase, or do you save the victims? My party split our efforts. Those that chose to give chase suffered some corruption, whereas those that chose to stay suffered less, if any at all. In essence, we both made the right choices, but the corruption number symbolizes whether or not our character will be able to rationalize the decision. At the end of the game, a die is cast, and should your corruption value fall below the number rolled, you gain an order rank. If it is at or above the value, you gain a chaos rank. Should you get ten Order ranks, you gain a fate point, should you gain ten Chaos ranks, you develop a disorder.

At first the Alignment and Order/Chaos ranking system felt like I was giving over some of my players choice in development to the game. After a while, however, the players have stated that it is all too easy to rationalize tough decisions when sitting at a table, and enjoy the opportunity to let their development grow one way or another at a standard rate. They reminded me that it was still their decision, as the way they earned the point was due to their choices, and that not knowing the corruption point values before they made the decisions was exciting.

So there's my take on what I find to be some of the positive differentiating aspects of the game. I hope you give it a shot when it is finished, as I believe the amount of changes made as it has progressed have by and large been for the better.

Thanks for the review Lyndon! Glad to hear you've been enjoying the GRIMDARK Beta.

In fact, we have a huge announcement incoming in the next week, so stay tuned to our home page at grimandperilous.com, warhammerfantasyroleplay.com or head to our Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/grimandperilous/

We are almost there!

Lyndon and ZWEIHÄNDER fans! We have long stated that we refuse to go to Kickstarter until we had thoroughly play-tested final version of the rules. After 4 years, 8 months and 12 days, we are proud to announce that the final draft for ZWEIHÄNDER Grim & Perilous RPG is complete!

ZWEIHÄNDER Grim & Perilous RPG will be the first of its kind to market: an inspired version of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, adaptable for any “grim & perilous” campaign set in the familiar Old World, the politically-inspired intrigues of George R.R. Martin’s A Song Of Ice and Fire, the racial tensions of Andrzej Sapkowski’s The Witcher, the criminal underworld of Scott Lynch’s Lies of Locke Lamora, the war-torn adventures set in Glen Cook’s The Black Company and other Renaissance-inspired adventures. Thoroughly play-tested by our internal team across nearly 240 game sessions and three major revisions, we are gearing up to bring it to the public by way of Kickstarter. We intend to use Kickstarter to help raise additional funds for artwork, editing and layout, along with providing you a way to get your hands on a Day One PDF release of the rules! Additionally, we’ll use Kickstarter to help drive pre-orders for print-on-demand softcover and hardcover options with our partners at Lulu.com. We’re aiming for a tentative Kickstarter launch date of July 25th. We are counting on your support to help bring this book to publication. Keep your eyes peeled, and if you haven’t already, please go over to our Facebook page and LIKE it! You can also head over to our forum at Strike to Stun to tell us what you’d like to see in our Kickstarter.

In celebration, we’re releasing a massive 45 page unedited preview of Chapter 10: Grimoire to you. This includes a full narrative and mechanical overview of how Magick works in ZWEIHÄNDER Grim & Perilous RPG. You can also peek at a full list of Generalist Petty Magicks, alongside Prayers of the God-Emperor, the Arcana of Pyromancy and their related Elite Professions. Finally, this preview also includes two new Rituals and mechanics for using mysterious Wytchstone to aid in casting spells.

Download the preview here: http://grimandperilous.com/?p=860