Review: One-Shots of the Reikland

This online-only publication contains five short adventures (all written by Ciaran O’Brien), each designed to be played in one session. They’re each 5-6 pages long but include the usual features of a 4th Edition short adventure – a brief summary, adventure hook and the adventure in three parts plus a brief conclusion, as well as details of the principal NPCs (though I’m sad to say, no NPC portraits). 

In fact every adventure is explicitly set in one of the properties from Buildings of the Reikland, so having that publication is a minor benefit (though its worth noting that One-Shots includes the relevant map and a very brief description, so there’s not a lot extra that you get on that particular building by getting the other pdf). 

On to the individual adventures… As usual spoilers follow!

Come Drown With Me

This is a spooky scenario set in a lock-keeper’s house, set by default on the Weissbruck Canal (which features in the first part of The Enemy Within campaign) – although there’s nothing stopping you relocating it elsewhere.

The PCs happen to be passing through the lock when an ancient chieftain – whose burial chamber lies, by chance, directly under lock-keeper’s dwelling – awakens, angry that his resting place is gradually being flooded by the canal above. This results in a spacial distortion (conveniently trapping the PCs here until they’ve resolved things), a horde of zombies¹ rising, a mean bunch of supernatural ravens, and a bunch of classic Haunted House shenanigans inside the house itself.

Lockhouse, featuring picturesque tower. Copyright Cubicle 7

The mechanism by which the PCs are trapped in the house is introduced in nice scene (they sail away on their barge, only to crash into the lock gate they’ve just passed through) but is ultimately a very heavy-handed device to force them to play through the adventure; not only is the house surrounded by a horde of zombies, but any attempt to run for it leads to them ending up back the house. I feel like you don’t really need the spacial distortion as well as the zombies – even if the PCs can somehow escape, you can easily rule that the elderly lock-keeper can’t make it, so they’d be leaving a kindly Halfling to a grisly fate.

That grumble aside, there is a lot to like here. The swarm ravens make a reasonably interesting enemy – and while it is a bit of a convenient trick, I rather liked that being wounded by them means a character can temporarily understand the language of the undead chieftain, enabling the GM to communicate the backstory and making a diplomatic resolution possible. The various spooky manifestations in the house are pretty nicely realised (e.g. sleeping results in a nightmare, you can end up getting throttled by a ghost or drowning in the parlour as it is filled by ectoplasmic water). And I do like that the finale involves the PCs literally ripping up the floorboards of the house to descend into the chieftain’s burial chamber, there to confront him with words or swords.

All in all: a reasonable little adventure which a small amount of tweaking could make very decent indeed.

The Lock-In

This is a nice little adventure set in a fortified coaching inn, the marvellously-named “Pouncing Pegasus”. The PCs are enjoying a quiet drink when the inn is surrounded by a mob stirred up by a classic Sigmarite witch hunter, who claims the inhabitants are corrupted servants of Chaos. The PCs have to deal with the various panicked inhabitants of the inn, and the possibility that the witch hunter might actually be right about some of them…

There’s something a little reminiscent of A Rough Night at the Three Feathers in this adventure, with a colourful cast of characters, a single location, and a number of incidents happening in a short timeframe. It’s a lot simpler than Rough Night, but on the other hand the presence of the mob surrounding the inn adds a certain peril and time pressure to events! The handful of events are quite fun – the best is a bunch of guests deciding that one of their number should surrender to the witch hunter in the (rather unrealistic) hope that he’ll let everyone else go, resulting in each person advancing arguments why they shouldn’t be chosen.

The PCs have the chance to identify some of the guests as potential Chaos cultists, although one will be unmasked regardless. The climax of the adventure is then that the cultists using magic to try and escape, with the PCs (hopefully) helping the witch hunter to prevent their exit. 

Exit, pursued by bear. Copyright Cubicle 7

There’s plenty of good stuff here: a lot of classic WFRP elements (coaching inn, witch hunter, cultists); the fun events and NPCs, lots of freedom in what to do within the inn. The use of magic at the end is a bit eyebrow-raising (magic miraculously spirits the remaining cultists up to the watch tower, there to attempt a demon summoning) but could be pretty easily changed.

One element that could do with a bit more work is that the mob is very much treated as a plot device to prevent the PCs (and other inhabitants) escaping – in a way rather reminiscent of the previous one-shot adventure in fact! It’s more problematic here in some ways, since these aren’t mindless zombies but regular (if faceless!) people. The adventure doesn’t address what might happen if the PCs try to reason with the mob, distract its members, or sneak out of the inn – any of which would require improvisation on the part of the GM. I think a good way to prevent PCs simply sneaking off would be to put an elderly or invalid NPC in their care, so they can’t easily make a break for it.

Nevertheless, I really like this one! Given that it is reasonably simple and includes a lot of classic WFRP tropes, I think this could be a very good starter adventure for new players.

The Siege of Walen Temple

A relatively simple scenario which simply sees the PCs helping defend a Temple of Sigmar when the village they are staying in (Walen, or possibly Wallen – the adventure isn’t sure of the spelling!) is the target of a Beastmen raid. I like the fact that the temple – being built of stone, and comfortably the largest building in the village – is a natural defensive location in the case of an attack. The adventure also gets points for considering the fact that the PCs might choose NOT to accompany the townsfolk into the temple, but rather try to fortify the inn in which they’re staying instead, with reasons given why the temple is a better choice for defence, and how things will play out if the PCs stubbornly insist on staying put anyway²!

En route to the temple the PCs can save a family of stragglers from the Beastmen vanguard – or choose to abandon them, resulting in the other villagers being distinctly less friendly later. Once in the temple they can contribute to healing the wounded before the Priest of Sigmar discreetly drops the bombshell that the nearest Reikland army is too far away to help them. There’s then a combat where the PCs and guards get to fight off a Minotaur smashing in the doors, before we get the Big Moral Choice. 

You see it turns out that the Beastman leader (a shaman) is secretly the son of Klaus, a staff member at the Temple, and the shaman gives the frightened villagers an ultimatum: send out his father to be murdered, and the Beastmen will spare the other villagers. Rather charitably, he then sends off the majority of the herd to raid elsewhere, leaving just himself and seven enormous Beastmen Gors so that the PCs can have a climactic final combat without being completely overwhelmed. The PCs can choose to send out Klaus – possibly as a distraction to allow them to get a better position for attacking the Beastmen. Not surprisingly he’ll be killed if they don’t intervene quickly, but surprisingly the Beastmen will actually spare the remaining villagers (after burning down their houses).

He does NOT look friendly. Copyright Cubicle 7

I quite like the adventure. It’s simple, and I have a soft spot for sieges, and I like the personal aspect to the final confrontation. I do feel it’s a bit too simplistic sometimes: I feel like this sort of situation is ripe for the sort of action-movie montage where the PCs fashion barricades, construct makeshift weapons, and give some rousing words to the terrified guards, and I wish the adventure was able to give a bit of space to those options. More annoyingly, the final confrontation is rather forced – there’s not really a good reason for the shaman to send away the majority of the herd beyond the meta-logic that the PCs couldn’t really hope to triumph otherwise! 

Curd Your Enthusiasm

One of the more unexpected locations in Buildings of the Reikland is a cheesemonger. This adventure sees the PCs hired to investigate the very odd (and blackly humorous) deaths of two people, who died in spectacularly disgusting fashion after eating a cheese purchased at this shop. If your first thought was “I wonder if the cheese was laced with warpstone” then congratulations, you’ve hit the jackpot. In fact, a Skaven spy (weirdly a Stormvermin) is manipulating the poor cheesemonger by using a (very convenient) magic item to masquerade as his dead wife.

Cubicle 7’s familiar strength of fun NPCs appears here: the PCs’ investigation will likely involving talking to the gossipy lady who rents the space above the cheeseshop and has designed on the widower cheesemonger, as well as the gloomy artist the floor above – wonderfully, the presence of warpstone below him is giving him awful dreams which has resulted in him producing some truly disturbing artwork. (This feels like it could be the hook to an adventure all by itself, in a distinctly Lovecraftian vein.) 

At the end of the day though the PCs just need to get into the basement of the cheesemonger where they can find the Skaven and have a Big Climactic Battle – either they’ll have a anticlimactic fight with one Stormvermin, or he’ll escape and return with some generic ratmen mooks for a bigger (but not much more interesting) fight. 

While I like the concept here, and I think the NPCs are pretty great, I don’t actually think this is that wonderful as an adventure. Ultimately the fact that the incriminating evidence is just in the basement is fairly disappointing – it’s probably the most likely place the PCs could look! – so its rather likely that this adventure could be extremely short indeed!

Sheep in Wolf’s Clothing

This adventure is set in the farmstead, with the PCs tasked with ousting a noble who has outstayed his welcome. The premise is a good one: a noble has his horse shod by the blacksmith son of the farmers, and when the horse subsequently threw him the family felt obliged to house him while he recovered. Unfortunately his recovery seems to be taking an extremely long time, while he eats the impoverished farmers out of house and home. 

There’s some fun stuff here, with memorable characters in the boorish, demanding noble and the family’s apparently demented grandmother who has an alleged knack for prophecy. The noble is actually a charlatan, and the adventure provides some clues that the PCs can find to discover this. Unfortunately it has a potentially fatal flaw, which is that it never quite manages to explain why this is an investigative adventure. Tasked with removing the boorish noble I feel that players are quite likely to resort to come up with plans involving intimidation or clever deception – none of which are addressed at all in this adventure. It simply assumes they will start snooping around his room! 

There’s also a painfully contrived coincidence where the adventure has two bounty hunters happen to turn up exactly at the point where the PCs have unmasked the conman. They’re not terribly interesting and this seems to just be there to set up a potential combat (because God forbid we have an adventure without combat).

This a fun concept let down by the execution. I think there is potentially a fun adventure here if you establish very clearly why the PCs can’t use violence to resolve it (having the “noble” drop heavy hints about his powerful uncle might help, and you could easily add in a bodyguard too), and if the you’re prepared to improvise when your players come up with inventive ways to convince him to leave.

Conclusion

I like One Shots of the Reikland a lot. Come Drown With Me and The Lock In rank up there with the best Fourth Edition adventures I’ve looked at so far; The Siege of Walen Temple is also pretty good. I’m less convinced by Curd Your Enthusiasm and Sheep in Wolf’s Clothing, but even those have some interesting ideas and I think could be adapted into very decent adventures with a bit of work.

As you might guess from the fact that all five adventures are based on places from Buildings of the Reikland, these are all adventures that take place in a single location. I think there’s nothing wrong with this approach – indeed, it is probably somewhat necessary, given the brief that they be playable in a single session – but it definitely feels like a limiting fact in Curd Your Enthusiasm, where there simply is not enough to do in that one location. Probably my main overall complaint is that three of the adventures (the best three, in fact) rely on somewhat artificial means of trapping the PCs in their single (using a mob of zombies, a mob of humans, and a giant Beastmen horde, respectively). 

Nevertheless at the end of the day I think this little pdf is amazingly good value – I’d say it’s worth getting even if you’re only interested in a couple of the adventures. As such I’d wholeheartedly recommend it! (Note that this content is included in Reikland Miscellanea so don’t go buying it twice!)

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1. No explanation is given for how corpses literally millenia old could still have flesh on them; I’d just make them animated Skeletons instead. ↩︎
2. One of my great head-in-hands moments of reading Terror in Talabheim is how in a very similar situation, the adventure gives no consideration to the fact that the PCs might choose to defend their current location instead of joining a headlong flight through the city. ↩︎