The Rundown

So, I started out with the premise that the characters would be refugees that survived the Storm of Chaos, which, for anyone who doesn't follow the WFRP mythos, was this huge army of Chaos worshippers, beastmen, mutants, amoral mercenaries, Chaos warriors, etc., lead by Archaon, a powerful champion of Chaos, that laid waste to most of the northern portions of the Empire before finally being stopped at Middenheim by the combined forces of the Imperial Army and an army of undead being lead by the Von Carstein vampires that happened to wander by at the time. Fighting chaos makes for some very strange bedfellows indeed.

The first step was to get the group together, and to this end I decided upon conscription as a very powerful motivator. One of the players had rolled up a soldier, so it was very easy just to make him the impromptu leader of the party (the conscripter, if you will). It wasn't until the second session that everyone had finally settled in on the name, or who, their characters were, and even now we are still having changes (new players joining the mix), so I won't give a list of characters or names until I have the complete mix down.

I began the first session by describing, in vivid detail, the execution of three accused chaos cultists by burning. I wanted to set the scene and give the players an idea of the atmosphere of fear and paranoia in which they would be working, as well as introduce one of the more powerful NPC's, Captain Vridel Kreutzhof, the ad hoc ruler of the camp. The atmosphere was transmitted very well, I think, especially as I described the crowds fervor as the condemned were slowly roasted.

After that I presented our soldier with a mission from Lt. Hoss Greuben. Kreuthof had decided that it was time to start sending scouting parties into the ruins of Ferlangen, and left it in Greuben's hands to arrange the details. Greuben chose for our soldier to prepare (conscript) a group, and also gave him a side mission: retrieve Sigmar's Seal.

The rest of the first game session consisted of existential forays, as we tried to explain to one of our newbies, who had never RP'ed before, exactly what the nature of the role-playing universe, which seemed to focus primarily on who and/or what is the GM, and getting the party assembled. All in all, not too bad for our first session.