Monday, May 16, 2011

Without The Enemy Within


One of the best and most beloved recorded Warhammer Fantasy Role Play campaigns that can be found on the great wide web will be ending this week. The Seattle-based gaming group has been running Enemy Within (Journey Into Madness) since September 2009. Since that time, 41 sessions have been posted on their blog, and I have listened to every one. Twice.

I heard about this blog when investigating WFRP 3rd Edition, published by Fantasy Flight Games. A forum member cited them as a standout example of how pen and paper RPG's should be. As I was about to GM my first sessions of the Dragon Age RPG I was very keen to listen to examples of how GM'ing is 'done'. After hearing the first session I was hooked, and I ended up taking on many aspects of Tim's GM style. Being Warhammer made it all the better!

The Enemy Within is regarded as one of the classic RPG campaigns of the past 30 years; a darker, grittier, more dangerous version of the popular Dungeons & Dragons in which no-one escapes unscathed or completely sane, and which explored urban settings to much more detail than other game systems. Set in an alternate timeline from the common Warhammer Fantasy canon, the storyline is as epic as it is compelling. And these guys do it justice.