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Driderman
2019-11-27, 01:58 PM
As the title implies, I'm looking for some suggestions for plot points for my upcoming WFRP campaign. The initial setting is going to be the village of Reinsfeld (maybe a few hundred inhabitants) which is nestled in a small, wooded valley in the south-west of Middenland along a tributary to the mighty Reik, close to the edge of the Grey Mountains.
Reinsfeld is run by a village major who answers to a local baron. Other than that it is mostly noteworthy for being out of the way of more or less everything, having a small temple/monastery dedicated to Ulric, having small primarily Hafling community on the outskirts, and having a ridiculous, 200 year old defensive siege weapon installation that a possible insane ancestor of the current baron had built in response to the last Great Chaos War.

My players are mostly Warhammer newbies, other than the guy who used to play Fantasy Battle, so I don't really want to overwhelm them with anything too major, and my initial premise is that I want to start a slow build-up of unusual and seemingly unconnected events that our intrepid PCs will try to handle, and gradually ramp it up to some kind of malevolent conspiracy that will likely involve witch hunters or inquisitors coming to town, if they get wind of it.
For theme, think something along the lines of Chocolat meets Sleepy Hollow meets the Salem Witch Trials, with a side of The Shire, set in The Empire (obviously)
I'm currently writing up a handful of possible plot points to expand on and I figured this would be a good place to source for suggestions. Any takers?

Duff
2019-11-27, 05:45 PM
Most of the "classics" work here:

A local mine has uncovered trouble (maybe just a small coal mine, so its not a huge factor in the village economy)
The strange old woman who lives in the woods and does healing potions (etc) needs a thing from deeper into the woods
Bandits. Maybe they picked off a tax collector. If they aren't found and the money returned, the baron is going to have to re-collect the tax for the year.
About the baron ... How old is he exactly? And he only receives visitor indoors if it's daytime?
A goblin band has been pushed out of the mountains by something nastier than them

Driderman
2019-11-27, 06:36 PM
Most of the "classics" work here:

A local mine has uncovered trouble (maybe just a small coal mine, so its not a huge factor in the village economy)
The strange old woman who lives in the woods and does healing potions (etc) needs a thing from deeper into the woods
Bandits. Maybe they picked off a tax collector. If they aren't found and the money returned, the baron is going to have to re-collect the tax for the year.
About the baron ... How old is he exactly? And he only receives visitor indoors if it's daytime?
A goblin band has been pushed out of the mountains by something nastier than them


Well since my players haven't actually rolled their characters yet I'm holding off on defining some things since what they roll might affect things. For example, default baron is an aging widower with 2 sons, 1 daughter and a small household including a seneschal, a knight, a scholar (for teaching the kids) and a imperially appointed siege engineer whose sole duty is to maintain the useless siege engines. Several of those roles could be filled by a player character so until I know that for sure, the baron isn't going to be defined as a vampire or other such.
I doubt there's any mines but an old quarry could be a nice location. There's definitely going to be shenanigans with "wise women" and hedgecraft practitioners to some extent so I'm going to need some potentially suspicious NPCs so the players will have to try and figure out WHO is practicing foul magic in the woods at night and who is just a harmless old coot.

I'm obviously going to be doing a lot of work on this myself but I figured it wouldn't hurt to get some other perspectives on potential plot points/storylines/NPCs/events, get the creative juices flowing by way of being inspired. It's not really a question of not having ideas, its more a question of wanting other peoples ideas as well :D
One thing I'm floundering a bit at currently is coming up with more ideas for folksy superstition events and rumors. You know, like claiming a witch soured your cow's milk and stuff like that

Kaptin Keen
2019-11-28, 02:03 AM
I think you should define why there's a village here. Farming communities are everywhere, but this place has a siege installation (for some reason - but most likely not for no reason at all), it's the seat of a local baron (and a baron is not a nobody - by rights, he should have lesser, landed knights below him), and it must have enough of some form of wealth to support a town population of a few hundred.

So what's here? It's on a river, so maybe it has a couple of mills (grain mill, sawmill?). Someone installed siege weapons, and that pretty much means there are town walls also. Maybe it's on a pass? Might not be an important pass, but some trade could come that way. It's in a mountain valley, so arable farmland might be scarce, but timber might be plentiful. There might be mines - or, as you say, a quarry. If there is any sort of mineral extraction, that needs transportation; river trams, maybe water locks, or heavy carts. Bandits are unlikely to rob carts of masonry materials, but they might go for silver ore, especially if it's already processed.

When you know what's here now, it's always nice to know what was here once. Did dwarves have an outpost around here in the past? Were battles fought here? Ancient chieftains buried? Do skaven scurry deep underground?

I find that once you've fully built the place - the plot is easy.

Name_Here
2019-11-30, 12:22 PM
Well if you're going to want to play through the enemy within campaign (recommend that you get to it eventually) then setting up the Ulfric vrs Sigmar stuff would be a pretty good idea. Maybe a group of Ulfric zealots have moved in and have started instigating violence against the local Sigmarites. Maybe the Sigmar priest killed a local in odd circumstances so the group needs to stop the locals from tearing him limb from limb at least until a someb¹ody comes to take him into custody.

Duff
2019-12-03, 09:33 PM
One thing I'm floundering a bit at currently is coming up with more ideas for folksy superstition events and rumors. You know, like claiming a witch soured your cow's milk and stuff like that

A list of common village event which could be blamed on "witchcraft". These allow the locals to wonder if it's actual magic or just nature
Poor harvest
Good harvest (especially if only some places got it)
Romantic success or failure. How could she win my husband from me? Witchcraft! How could she resist my advances? Witchcraft!
Weather events
Missing animals
Disease - human. plant or animal
Disturbed graves
Mental health issues

Then you get your actual witchcraft...
Undead
Transformations. A person has been hit with Pinochio's curse. My cow is now a hippopotamus. My mandarin now produces blue mandarins and I'm scared to eat them

xroads
2019-12-11, 01:24 PM
Is your overall campaign going to climax with a battle at the doorstep of the village? Because the siege engine installation certainly sounds like a Chekhov's Gun. If so, who is the eventual enemy?

Resileaf
2019-12-13, 01:13 PM
Is your overall campaign going to climax with a battle at the doorstep of the village? Because the siege engine installation certainly sounds like a Chekhov's Gun. If so, who is the eventual enemy?

Bonus point if the owner of the siege engine installation's name is Chekhov (Make him Kislevite).

comicshorse
2019-12-13, 03:29 PM
One thing I'm floundering a bit at currently is coming up with more ideas for folksy superstition events and rumors. You know, like claiming a witch soured your cow's milk and stuff like that

Flames burn blue in the presence of witches (warlock/chaos worshiper/etc) (especially if rotten witch hunters have a pinch of chemicals to quietly sprinkle on the flame to ensure they get paid for finding a witch)
Witches scare animals/ animals love them. (Again depends on what the accused is like with animals)
Witches will have a third nipple form which their familiar (usually but not always a cat) can suckle
Hammering a nail into the ground where the witch has trodden will render them lame ( Obviously nonsense smart dabblers in the dark arts spread about to 'prove' their innocence. Unless their patron chaos god has actually cursed with that. Because, y'know, Chaos )
Somebody takes babies into the woods to offer them to dark powers/ or children born with mutations, ( what are they diggin out of that old quarry ?), are taken out to be given to a local group of harmless mutants who survive in the woods

Oh and woods. You gotta have beastmen bands at some point. Woods have beastmen, thats Warhammer 101

Cikomyr
2019-12-13, 11:02 PM
The one WFRP plot I ran, very successfully, was the players are traveling to Marienburg to settle in this city, as the Storm of Chaos ravaged their native provinces. They hope to make a new life there.

However, the city has befell a heavy corruption. The Dark Elves have secretly taken over the Sea Elves, and have used precision piracy to give them a massive economic advantage over the entire city.

At this point, the Elven Enclave has taken economic and political control over the entire city, and are enacting corrupt and violent policies to ramp up violence, abuse and civil discontent. The Enclave even forced the Directorate to enact a "100 for 1" retribution policy, where any violence against any elf would be answered by the death of a 100 humans, starting with the family and friends of the perpetrators. (think Spoony's description of Thieves' World)

The end agenda of this is to turn Marienburg into a Shrine of Khaine via countless murder. At various moment, during a time of Great Significant Murderous Event (to be determined), a Sign of the Apocalypse happens. In my game, there was a zombie uprising of the recent decease, and the players were caught in the sewers during that time as a father (one of the PC) almost killed his son (an investigator NPC).

From there, you can start any plot threat you want based on your players' interest. Just make any villany either link back to the Elves, their agents, or anyone who is trying to oppose them. Marienburg is a fantastic city of intrigue, with various factions with power stakes that can fit any backstory and interest.

My players ended up dealing with the Sea Elves, the Dwarven Merchant House (to build a steam engine), the Myrmidian Church, the Manaan Church, the mob, the City Watch.

They created The Golden Guard, an alternative to the corrupt city watch sponsored by the Myrmidian church (one of the player was a Myrmidian Knight), they tried to Reform the Manaan church to accept Steam-powered ships, they schemed and built a network of politican alliance and eventually exposed the Dark Elves at the heart of the corruption of the city.

Then, they knew they had to stop all retaliotary violence against the Elves, and took the street to protect them, as the Dark Elves would have been happy if there had been a massacre anyway. In the end, the final boss was one of the player who got corrupted by an evil Khaine artifact sword he got earlier in the campaign and who took control of the City Watch, and moved against the Golden Guard. The final fight was the superpowered PC vs the rest of the party.

It came to the final die throw. ****ing epic. He was defeated. the players were now in various positions of power in the city, and yet.. in Marienburg's underground, the uncorrupted version of the Villanous PC is slowly rebuilding his empire..

Oh man, that bring so much memories. I love Marienburg.

Guizonde
2019-12-14, 04:24 AM
ok, i'm throwing ideas at the wall here, tell me if i should stop:

there's rumors of an old crone going out into the forest at dusk. people think she's pactising with chaos to curse the baron's family. in fact, she's misguidedly praying at a beastman altar to ensure a good harvest. upon inspection, she's just a very misguided old lady who thinks she's a magic user (but isn't).
said prayers don't fall on deaf ears however, and a beastman shaman is indeed gathering a warband to raid the village. he's sent envoys throughout the forest to gather even more.
the constant braying at night is interpreted by less scrupulous folks as a sign that sigmar has abandonned them, and so go all quisling on the empire, and start praying to the beastmen (and so the chaos gods) for safe passage through the night. magic powers in the population start to manifest, including a little girl that sets feathers on fire with her mind.
a travelling witch hunter hears of this and comes to check out the village. in reality he's a double agent and searches the lands for new recruits in the name of tzeentch, the god of magic. everyone he rounds up is taken outside the village. everyone he burns is someone who's seen through his ruse.
magic phenomena happen at night, scaring the populace into searching for even more witches. one night, an angry mob gets attacked by a herd of beastmen.

maybe the siege engine could be used to take out a herd? i don't know.

KineticDiplomat
2019-12-21, 12:35 AM
Well, it being WFRP and most of your players being new, perhaps the first sessions eschew epic notions in favor of a little bit of driving home that it’s a crap sack world and your choices are black and dark gray at best. Also, if I recall early characters are not exactly heroic in capability. Some ideas

-Peasants complain of witches. When the witchhunters come to town halfway through the players doing their thing, the cure may be worse than the disease.

-A series of (insert faction) raids is causing the baron to raise his levies. The players get to help. But raising the levies involves things like special war taxes and dragging away unhappy peasants.

-Bandits! But very Robin Hood with demonstrable reason to be upset with their overlords. But actually a Tzeentch cult.