Graeme Davis's Blog, page 2

WFRP 1 Easter Eggs: Power Behind the Throne, Part 2

Last week’s post covered most of the silly names in Power Behind the Throne, and sharp-eyed readers called out a few more in the comments. This week, I’m moving on to the adventure itself.

The first thing I noticed, looking at the adventure content, is that there are an awful lot of minor NPCs with names that probably bear investigation. Like those in last week’s post, they are probably the result of Carl’s sense of humor and his German dictionary. But I don’t want to present another list of names and translations here, so please, feel free to call them out in the comments.

The section on the Major Attractions of Carnival Week includes quite a few jokes, starting with the fake postcard by Paul Bonner on page 23. If you went anywhere fun in the 1980s, you sent picture postcards – there were no selfies, and no socials to post them on – and many postcards were multi-image jobs showing off the main attractions of the seaside town or wherever else you were staying. I thought it would be fun to spoof one of those, as well as an opportunity to illustrate multiple events in a limited space. Luckily, Paul Bonner agreed.

The flying displays at the Great Park are obviously inspired by the RAF’s Red Arrows and other aerobatic display teams. Actually, I’m rather surprised that Carl didn’t give the flying wizards a pun name referencing them directly.

The Black Pool Illuminations are a reference to the English seaside town of Blackpool and its annual festival of lights, which has been running since 1897 and remains the high point of the town’s calendar.

Image from Wikipedia. No challenge to rights holders intended.

Snotball is clearly a reference to football (soccer to American readers). In the first draft the sport used actual Snotlings, whose life among Orcs and Goblins had so inured them to all kinds of cartoonish abuse that being used as a ball didn’t seem that bad to them. Bryan Ansell did not like this at all, telling us that it was basically “tying up a small animal and kicking it to death.” In the final draft, this barbaric version of the game was placed in the distant past, and a ball was used instead. Carl’s writing often had to be toned down in this way.

Carl’s humor shows very clearly in the titles of the various plays and operas: The Barbarian of Seville, The Ring of the Nibble Unger Lied, and A Knight’s Midsummer Dream. I’m sure Rossini, Wagner, and Shakespeare would not have found Carl’s tribute as funny as we did.

The Dwarven Valley Choirs are a reference to Welsh male voice choirs, for which the nation is famed to this day. (In Love Actually, the policeman who makes Hugh Grant jump when he joins in the Christmas carol is Welsh.) According to English prejudices of the time, Wales was populated entirely by coal miners and shepherds, with the former providing an easy satirical jump to Dwarves.

Another instance of Carl sticking one toe over the line of good taste was Guiseppi Pastrami’s Luccinian Liturgical Castrates Choir. This is a clear reference to the 16th-century Italian practice of castrating choirboys to prevent their voices deepening with puberty, and frankly I’m surprised it made it into print.

Finally, there are the Ice Dance Championships. The favorite, an Elf named Torvyll Undean, is a reference to the record-breaking duo Jayne Torville and Christopher Dean, who were the pride of Britain throughout the 1980s. Little-remembered today, they were household names at the time and to make any reference to skating without mentioning them would have been unthinkable.

Image from Wikipedia. No challenge to rights holders intended.

It’s well known that the Purple Hand storyline comes to a screeching halt after the defeat of Karl-Heinz Wasmeier, their supreme leader or Magister Magistri. At the time, we intended that the cult would retreat, regroup, let people think it had been destroyed, and return later under new leadership, but that never had a chance to happen. Something Rotten in Kislev took the campaign in a completely unexpected direction, and Empire in Flames was rushed out to bring the campaign to an end after GW management lost interest.

Heinrich Todbringer was nothing more than a name at the time Power Behind the Throne was written. The intention, as far as I remember it, was to have him come back and possibly become Emperor in the conclusion to the campaign, ushering in a new age in the history of the Empire. I’ll have more to say about that when I cover Empire in Flames.

In general, the major NPCs were set up in such a way as to offer the GM a series of “gotcha” moments to spring on their players. Most of them were so flawed, or so fundamentally unlikeable, that it would be easy for a party to dismiss or offend the very character who was their key to unlocking the next part of the social puzzle – leaving them with some serious groveling to do, or the need to find some other way around the difficulty. The whole adventure is an elaborately-constructed social minefield, as generations of players have discovered.

Much has been made of Golthog, the Ogre mercenary in the “Chaos Strikes by Night” section – especially the fleeting suggestion that he might be used as a replacement PC if needed. That was me. As I said in an earlier post, I had a bee in my bonnet at the time about making Ogres available as player characters, and this was my way of trying to force the issue by stealth. I wanted players to spot this and start demanding to play Ogre characters, so that GW would have to green-light my proposed supplement. It didn’t work.

…and that’s everything I can remember, at least for now. If anything comes up, I’ll drop it in a comment, and if you spotted anything I missed, or if you have any questions, let me have them and I’ll do my best to answer.

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The brunnmigi is a fox-like trickster that fouls wells and other sources of fresh water with its urine. This 5-page, system-agnostic, PDF monster toolkit includes:

Stat guidelines for d20-based, d100-based, and – through comparisons with common creatures from most settings – all other tabletop roleplaying systems.A full monster description with lists of basic and optional skills and traits.Three adventure seeds, covering fantasy, historical, and modern settings.

The Monster of the Month Club As a member, you can expect regular, in-depth treatments of creatures from worldwide myth and folklore—some familiar, some not—in a system-agnostic format that is easy for an experienced GM to use with the tabletop rpg system of their choice.
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WFRP 1 Easter Eggs: Power Behind the Throne, Part 1

Power Behind the Throne was written out-of-house by Carl Sargent, so it was less affected by the Design Studio silliness that you’ve seen in previous products. As you’ve seen in the last post, though, Carl Sargent was far from humorless. Here are some things I found while re-reading the adventure: I’m sure there are more that went over my head.

The Major NPCs

As we’ve already seen, the image of the regrettably-named Gotthard Goebbels was based on former White Dwarf editor Paul Cockburn.

The lecherous “doctor” Luigi Pavarotti takes his name from the famous tenor Luciano Pavarotti, who was at the height of his fame at the time.

The rest of the NPCs aren’t based on anyone in particular, as far as I remember, but there are plenty of silly German names.

The Todbringer “Death-bringer” family was already established in The Enemy Within.

The name of the princess’s chaperone, Hildegarde Zimperlich, mean “squeamish.” There was a Mrs. Squeamish in William Wycherley’s 1675 play The Country Wife, but I don’t know if that was an inspiration. Certainly, delicacy and even squeamishness are key characteristics of a good court chaperone.

Schutzmann means “policeman,” making it a suitable, if rather lazy, name for the Watch Commander.

Schwermutt (or rather schwermut) means “melancholy,” though there is no trace of melancholy in the General’s description.

Maximillian von Genscher seems to be named after Hans-Dietrich Genscher, who was the German Vice-Chancellor at the time.

The name of High Wizard Albrecht Helseher translates roughly as “Hell-seer.” Don’t look into any strange palantirs, Max!

His deputy, Janna Eberhauer, has a name that translates as “boar tusks,” at least according to Google Translate. What that has to do with her as a character, I don’t know.

The name of the Graf’s Paramour, Emmanuelle Schlagen, is a German verb meanin “to hit.” I suppose that means she is a striking woman! And as with Grand Countess Emmanuelle von Liebowitz (later changed to Liebwitz), her first name is a reference to the series of French movies which ran from 1975 to 1993. Poor form to reuse a joke in this way, I feel, but there it is.

Of the ladies at court, Kirsten Jung is named after the Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung, while Petra Liebkosen’s name means “caress” and Natasha Sinnlich’s means “sensual.” A little obvious (not to mention sexist) given their roles entertaining important visitors to the Graf’s court, but the depiction of women in fantasy was very different in the 1980s to how it is today. Plus, of course, we never expected any non-native English speakers to even look at WFRP!

Siegfried Prunkvoll’s name translates as “magnificent,” which I guess reflects his appearance more than his character.

One to the Law Lords. Reiner Ehrlich’s name means “honest,” and Joachim Hoflich’s means “polite” (give or take an umlaut over the ‘o’). Karl-Heinz Wasmeier seems to be named after the German skier Markus Wasmeier.

SPOILERS!

At the start of the adventure, Hoflich has been replaced by a doppelganger (give or take an umlaut over the ‘a’). There’s a story behind this, which explains why I have always believed that this adventure was originally created for AD&D. Others firmly disagree, so I don’t know what the truth is. But anyway…

Doppelgangers were a last-minute addition to the Bestiary chapter of the WFRP rulebook. Citadel never made a doppelganger miniature – perhaps for obvious reasons – so they were never part of Warhammer. They were well established in D&D, though. Shortly before the WFRP first edition rulebook went to print, I was told to add an entry for doppelgangers to the Bestiary, because there was an adventure coming in that would require them. So I did, and in due course Power Behind the Throne came in from Carl.
Make what you will of that!

Minor NPCs

There are a few more interesting names among the lesser NPCs.

The Spy Nastassia Hess is another example of our thoughtless use of Nazi names, being named after Hitler’s deputy Rudolf Hess. Her first name might be inspired by the actress Nastassia Kinski, who had stared in a very steamy remake of Cat People in 1982. That’s the one with the iconic David Bowie song.

The staff of the Pit tavern also seem to have been named out of a pocket German dictionary. Landlord Fritz Schwanger’s name means “pregnant” – possibly a reference to his stomach, althouth he is described as being of medium-heavy build. Otto Geschwur’s name means “ulcer,” and I have no idea why. Bruno Kohl, of course, is named after eye makeup, which actually fits his club-kid persona.

Then we have Wasmeier’s pawns. Brunhilde Klaglich (again missing an umlaut over the ‘a’) means “miserable,” which again is at odds with her character. Her aliases are more in point: Kaltblutic means “cold-blooded” and Kenner means “connoisseur.” Dagmar Mitschuldige’s name means “complicit,” which makes a kind of sense, while Fleischer means “butcher” and Hundisch means dog-like. Those two seem fairly random.

Finally, the name of Wasmeier’s servant Swelt Tunger translates as “tungsten.” Again I have no idea why, any more than I know where the name Swelt came from.

Phew! That’s a lot of names. I’m going to break this entry into two, and next week’s post will look at the adventure itself. See you then!

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And Also…

July’s Monster of the Month is posted on my Patreon page.

The brunnmigi is a fox-like trickster that fouls wells and other sources of fresh water with its urine. This 5-page, system-agnostic, PDF monster toolkit includes:

Stat guidelines for d20-based, d100-based, and – through comparisons with common creatures from most settings – all other tabletop roleplaying systems.A full monster description with lists of basic and optional skills and traits.Three adventure seeds, covering fantasy, historical, and modern settings.

The Monster of the Month Club As a member, you can expect regular, in-depth treatments of creatures from worldwide myth and folklore—some familiar, some not—in a system-agnostic format that is easy for an experienced GM to use with the tabletop rpg system of their choice.
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WFRP 1 Easter Eggs: Warhammer City

Published in 1987, Warhammer City started life as a background section in Carl Sargent’s manuscript for Power Behind the Throne. Unlike the town section in Shadows over Bögenhafen, though, it grew and grew. The city-state of Middenheim was a far larger proposition than a simple market town, after all, and we had also seen city supplements for other games (not least Thieves’ World from Chaosium and Lankhmar: City of Adventure from TSR) and we wanted WFRP to have one of its own.

The original title was City of the White Wolf, but Bryan Ansell vetoed it. He wanted Warhammer in the title, and he wanted the title (all titles, as we saw with Warhammer Campaign and Warhammer Adventure) to be simpler and more self-explanatory. So Warhammer City it became, with the subtitle on the flyleaf “A Complete Guide to Middenheim: City of the White Wolf.”

It was later republished, bound together with Power Behind the Throne, under the title Warhammer: City of Chaos.

But on with the jokes:

The Art

Martin McKenna strikes again. In the Encounters section, the Bunko Artist is Paul Daniels, a popular stage magician on British TV at the time, and the Racketeer is based on Gareth Hale, half of the TV comedy duo Hale and Pace who were renowned for their tuxedo-clad thug characters Ron and Ron.

The Charlatan character portrait looks familiar, too – another vintage movie start, I’d guess – but I can’t place him. Any old movie buffs out there who can provide an ID?

Tony Ackland is not to be outdone. The cultists of the Jade Sceptre include Rick Priestley and Sid, who was a Citadel figure painter at the time. Sid, an outlaw biker through and through, was not too pleased with being depicted as a Slaanesh cultist.

Back to Martin McKenna, and the major NPCs. The regrettably-named Gotthard Goebbels (also in Power Behind the Throne) was based on Paul Cockburn, onetime editor of White Dwarf. Carl loved to insult him.

The Words

The Begierbaden is an obscure pun of mine. I knew the name of the place would end in —baden, since it’s a public baths. I was looking for something to go with —baden, and “beg yer pardon” popped into my brain. I suppose I should apologise.

Baron Stefan was originally called “Shakin’ Stefan” after the singer Shakin’ Stevens, who was popular at the time, but this was ruled to be too tasteless even for WFRP.

The managers of the Showboat are called Rolf and Elise Rosencrantz who run it on behalf of a certain Guildenstern. Those who know Hamlet (or Tom Stoppard, come to that) will recognise the names.

Johann Stallart, the proprietor of the Drowned Rat, is based on Games Workshop sales manager John Stallard. He said he wanted to be made into a WFRP character, but was less than flattered by the result.

Edam Gouda, “the Big Cheese,” is without a doubt the lamest NPC name in the history of WFRP, even including the demon Zahnarzt from The Dying of the Light. It wasn’t my idea; that’s all I’m saying.

The Windhund Haulage Company gets its name from the German for Greyhound, as in Greyhound Buses.

Salladh-bar the Arabyan necromancer was swiped from a TV sketch by The Two Ronnies, who sent up the sword-and-sorcery genre with the diminutive Ronnie Corbett playing a barbarian hero named Mudgard the Mighty.

Carl takes every opportunity to skewer the mid-80s club scene in this book. “Gorgeous” Georg Mikael, the owner of the Templar’s Downfall, is singer George Michael from his Wham! days. Cocktails were all the rage in the club scene then, but none of them got quite so extreme as the Hush Puppy. I can’t believe that made it into print. By the way, Hush Puppies were a brand of shoe at the time. Could be they still are.

Fimally, the name of the Alte Geheerentode rum in the Man O’War translates as “Old Brain-Death” — from Wastelander, at least.

And that’s it for this time. Stay tuned for Power Behind the Throne!

Want to support my work?

If you’ve enjoyed the content on this blog, please consider supporting me by making a small donation. Here are a couple of ways to do so.

Thanks!

And Also…

July’s Monster of the Month just posted on my Patreon page.

The brunnmigi is a fox-like trickster that fouls wells and other sources of fresh water with its urine. This 5-page, system-agnostic, PDF monster toolkit includes:

Stat guidelines for d20-based, d100-based, and – through comparisons with common creatures from most settings – all other tabletop roleplaying systems.A full monster description with lists of basic and optional skills and traits.Three adventure seeds, covering fantasy, historical, and modern settings.

The Monster of the Month Club As a member, you can expect regular, in-depth treatments of creatures from worldwide myth and folklore—some familiar, some not—in a system-agnostic format that is easy for an experienced GM to use with the tabletop rpg system of their choice.
Join us on Patreon at patreon.com/MonsteroftheMonthClub, follow us @MotMClub, or email rpgmonsterclub@yahoo.com.

WFRP 1 Easter Eggs: The Enemy Within, Part 2

The last post covered in-jokes and pop-culture references in The Enemy Within and Shadows over Bögenhafen. This time, let’s take a look at Death on the Reik.

The name of this adventure was a riff on the title of Agatha Christie’s murder mystery Death on the Nile. The 1978 film version, starring Peter Ustinov and an all-star cast of suspects, had long gone from cinemas by that time, but was shown in television at least once a year ever since.

Even though neither Hercule Poirot nor Alphonse Hercules de Gascoigne was anywhere to be seen, Death on the Reik didn’t lack for movie-star power, courtesy of artist Martin McKenna.

For example, the cultists pictured alongside the generic cultist stats at the start of the adventure are clearly comedy-horror stalwarts Peter Lorre and Vincent Price. In the adventure, I named these characters Loorbeer and Kuhn. That was my schoolboy-German attempt to render the names Laurel and Hardy, because I didn’t expect the players to take them seriously. It’s probably as well that I didn’t tell Martin McKenna that – having them drawn as Vincent Price and Peter Lorre is going quite far enough…

Tangent: Peter Lorre’s birth name was László Löwenstein. A character by this name – give or take an accent or two – appears in Kim Newman / Jack Yeovil’s Warhammer novel Drachenfels. Unsurprisingly he is what one commentator described as “a creepy actor.” Under his own name, Newman wrote extensively on films.

The determined-looking lady holding the lantern in the section about the Dwarf town is none other than Greta Garbo, in her role as Queen Christina in the 1933 movie of that name.

The racketeer Luigi Belladonna has a passing resemblance to Marlon Brando in “The Godfather.”

Corrobreth the druid is a little more modern – or rather, he was more modern at the time. He’s based on Ian McShane, who played the roguish antique dealer Lovejoy on British TV from 1986 to 1994.

Herbert Marcuse the Innkeeper looks suspiciously like veteran British actor Stanley Holloway.

And, of course, there are no prizes for spotting that the vampire Graf Orlok was inspired by movie Dracula Bela Lugosi – though it’s a little unfortunate that I stole his name from a completely different movie with a very different vampire: Nosferatu.

Vintage actors weren’t the only star turns:

Hans-Peter Schiller the Wizard’s Apprentice was based on Polish mathematician, astronomer, and all-round clever-clogs Nicolaus Copernicus. Polish WFRP fans are among the game’s most loyal and passionate supporters, and I’d love to say this was a deliberate tip of the hat to them, but at that time we didn’t know about them, so far away in Nottingham.

The name, of course, comes from the German playwright, poet, and philosopher Friedrich Schiller.

Kurt Kutzmann is based on Steve “BiL” Sedgewick, who was a graphic designer at GW at the time. He was also the creator of the Gobblebdigook cartoon strip, which ran for several years in White Dwarf. Here he is from Death on the Reik and from Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader, by Martin McKenna both times.

Kurt von Wittgenstein is Charles “Chaz” Elliot, who was also a graphic designer at GW at that time. Of course, the Wittgenstein name was stolen from another German philosopher.

And then, there’s the Wittgenstein monster.

Ludwig von Wittgenstein, of course, is stolen from Franz Kafka’s novella The Metamorphosis.

The moment where the PCs encounter the Goblin chief in drag (on the logical — if stupid – pretext that he’s wearing one of the lady wizard’s dresses and expects it to grant him the same magical powers that she has) is one of the definitive “Warhammer humor” moments, to my mind.

GW policy at the time mandated that every WFRP adventure should come with a miniatures deal, just like the Warhammer battle packs had done. Death on the Reik was the last of these, because no roleplayer would ever pay a hundred pounds or more for miniatures for a single, one-use adventure. Nonetheless, Kevin “Goblinmaster” Adams sculpted the miniature, and as expected, it sold miserably. The Citadel sculptors hated having to make miniatures for WFRP adventures, not least because royalties made up a large proportion of their income.

The town names of the Reikland are worth a look. It’s not easy to come up with a hundred or so place names at the drop of a hat, so gags, puns and pure stream of consciousness have played their part.

For example, you’ll see the names of a lot of people who were at Games Workshop at the time. There’s Anseldorf, Priestlicheim, Halheirn and Merretheim — the last being named after Alan Merrett, who was production manager, or some such title. The Hahnbrandt mine is named after Paul Cockburn, as best as my little German dictionary would allow.

There’s also a series where someone (not me, but I don’t know who) must have been in a very bad mood: there’s Braundorf, Naffdorf, Brasthof and Ripdorf; I thought there was also a Pissdorf, but it looks like cooler counsels prevailed there.

Others include Wurfel (German for dice), Stockhausen (named after the composer), Sprinthof and Barfsheim, and if you take a German dictionary to the rest you’ll find that most of them have some meaning or another.

The NPC names in Death on the Reik are not as silly as those in the previous Enemy Within adventures. Instead, there’s a strong philosophical theme running through them: Wittgenstein is the most obvious, but you’ll also find Schiller, Rousseaux, Eysenck, and Hegel among the NPCs. There may be more — I never was much good at Spot the Philosopher.

Frau Blucher, Rousseaux’s housekeeper, is named after the character in Mel Brooks’ Young Frankenstein. Remember her? Every time her name was mentioned, the horses would rear and whinny in panic.

Of course, there are some silly names. Shiv Doppler, for example (from Doppler Shift), and Anjulls Isembeard the Dwarf Engineer — not a very Dwarven name, but a pun on the celebrated 19th-century engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel.

The Chaos Warrior Ulfhednar the Destroyer gets his name from a group of berserkers I read about in a Norse saga — I think the name translates as wolf’s hide, or something like that. If memory serves, I actually gave that name to a miniature (naming minis being one of many duties that fell to the writing team), and he was taken across to the adventure lock, stock, and wolfskin cloak.

I’ve always been in favour of giving NPCs names that are connected to their professions: after all, that’s how we get names like Butcher, Baker, Fletcher, and so on today. So Renate Hausier’s name means pedlar, and Bernhardt Dampfer’s name means some kind of ship – a steamship, I think, which is a bit incongruous.

Finally, the Seer Unserfrau (not strictly an NPC, I suppose, since the PCs only see his writings, not the long-dead sage himself) is Nostradamus, translated literally from Latin to German.

By this stage in the campaign, we were starting to worry about the Purple Hand appearing to be the only Chaos Cult in the Empire — ironic, really, considering that this plotline was never satisfactorily resolved. Anyway, that is why there are mentions of the Red Crown and Jade Sceptre cults. By the way, “jade sceptre” is a euphemism used in ancient Chinese erotic literature for – well, I hardly like to say. I have to admit that one was mine, and I was probably the only one who knew its meaning. Management didn’t for sure, or it would never have seen print.

So there you are. Next week, I’ll move on to Warhammer City, which was a part of the campaign even though it wasn’t an adventure. See you then!

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WFRP 1 Easter Eggs: The Enemy Within, Part 1

Continuing this series on the in-jokes and sight gags in WFRP 1st edition, here’s a look into the first two adventures in The Enemy Within campaign: The Enemy Within itself and Shadows over Bögenhafen. They were originally published separately in module format, before being collected in a sturdier hardback as Warhammer Campaign, and finally bound together with Death of the Reik (of which more next time) in the softback Warhammer Adventure.

Neither of these adventures had any artist in-jokes, perhaps because most of the internal art was commissioned from freelancers and the jokes were very much a Design Studio thing. The same cannot be said of the words, though, which were written entirely by Jim, Phil, and me.

The Enemy Within

The legend of Sigmar was Phil’s creation, although the inspiration for the storms and the comet at his birth came from Shakespeare’s Henry IV.

The Age of the Three Emperors helped to underline that the apparent unity of the Empire was often skin-deep, and foreshadowed future unrest. The beginning of the Dark Ages with the coronation of the Empress Margaritha in 1979 IC was a blatant reference to Margaret Thatcher, who had been in power for seven years by that time and was at the height of her unpopularity.

The names of the noble houses contain a few lame gags — the Holswig-Schliestiens are of course based on the real German province of Schleswig-Holstein, and then there is the -Untermensch family, which upset quite a few German readers. The term Untermensch (literally “under-person” or “sub-human”) was used by the Nazis to cover anyone they considered to be of insufficient racial purity, such as Jews and Gypsies. In hindsight, it wasn’t the most sensitive choice of name. At the time we just thought it would be an ironic name to give to a powerful family — and we never expected in a million years that anyone from a non-English-speaking country would ever read anything we wrote. All I can say at this stage is, it was a very bad idea and I’m glad it was corrected in subsequent editions.

Countess Emmanuelle von Liebewitz, famed for her parties, was named for another Emmanuelle of cinematic renown, whose parties were probably equally as good.

Todbringer, the name of the ruling family of Middenheim, means “death-bringer,” which we thought would be an appropriate name for the ruler of the city where the Cult of Ulric is strongest.

The names of the coaching companies include Castle Rock, named after a local Nottingham brewery, and Cannon Ball Express, a reference to an old (even then) American TV series about a legendary train driver called Casey Jones.

Count Bruno Pfeifraucher’s name means “pipe smoker,” inspired by St. Bruno pipe tobacco. We had grown up with ads like this one.

I have to take full responsibility for the von Saponatheim family name: “once upon a time” with a heavy fake German accent. It’s not one people tend to spot, but they do often groan and throw things when it’s explained to them. However, I didn’t coin the name myself. That credit goes to my college friend Ant Allan, who suggested it when another friend was struggling to name his Austrian parapsychologist character for our Call of Cthulhu campaign, somewhere around 1983. It cracked everyone up at the time, and I couldn’t resist steal… er, recycling it for the campaign.

Most place names are pretty much straight out of my pocket German dictionary: Grunmarkt means Green Market, Weissbruck means White Bridge, and so on.

The Drak Wald owes its name to a typo, which originally said something about “drak forests” instead of dark forests. This amused Richard Halliwell enormously and he was ribbing us about drak forests for days — so one of the Empire’s great forests was called the Drak Wald.

Castle Reikguard, at the confluence of the rivers Reik and Teufel, was named after Right Guard anti-perspirant. Here’s another vintage ad promising that it would change your life.

“Mistaken Identity” includes a lot of silly names: Gustav Fondleburger, Lady Isolde von Strudeldorf (the place must be famous for its pastries) and Philippe Descartes the Bretonnian gambler. Coincidentally, the French publisher of WFRP 1st edition was Jeux Descartes, whose logo is a portrait of the famous scientist and philosopher Rene Descartes and whose name is a play on the French for “card games.” So it wasn’t just us.

And then there’s the law firm of Lock, Stock and Barl, on the fateful letter that sends Our Heroes to Bogenhafen. Better than Sue, Grabbitt and Runne, I suppose, but only just. And of course, there’s also the barge the Berebeli (“beer belly”), a pre-generated PC named Johann Dassbut (inspired by the German cinematic epic Das Boot), and another pregenerated PC nicknamed “Rowlocks.” They’re mostly called “oar locks” these days, I suspect because “rowlocks” had a tendency to be pronounced “rollocks” back then, which of course rhymes with “bollocks.”

The name of the Cat and Fiddle inn in Altdorf comes straight out of long-running BBC radio soap The Archers, while Max Ernst the protagonist was named after the surrealist painter.

Shadows over Bögenhafen

This adventure was actually written before The Enemy Within, and retro-fitted into the campaign. The WFRP writing team had not yet come together, and I hadn’t got fully into the swing of Warhammer humor. So while it’s not entirely devoid of jokes and pop culture references, there are fewer of them and arguably they’re not as funny.

The inspiration for the plot was Faust (Marlowe, Goethe, Thomas Mann, Richard Burton — take your pick), which I changed a little because two things about that story had always bothered me.

First, I never understood why Faust agreed to hand his soul over after seven years, and never seemed to think of the consequences until the final scene when the time comes for him to be dragged screaming down to Hell. So the deal had to include an escape clause: the sacrifice of seven souls in substitution for the original.

Second, given the supposition that demons, devils and the like are ancient and immortal beings, it seems logical that any mortal who tries to make a deal with one will probably lose. After all, the poor mortal will be up against centuries if not millennia of experience, and couldn’t hope to match a demon for cunning. Therefore, the escape clause had to be a trap in itself. allowing Gideon the demon (this was before the “daemon” spelling entered Warhammer canon) to open a dimensional gate in the heart of the Old World, a service for which he might expect to be richly rewarded.

The cult of Ordo Septenarius was named for the seven members of its inner circle. I also thought the cultists needed a rational motive of their own, so playing on their greed, Teugen tries to save his own soul by getting them unknowingly to sacrifice theirs in a ritual that they think will control the market by sorcery and make them all rich. A fable for the Yuppie era, as befits an adventure written in 1986.

Teugen’s name was inspired by Teufel ,which is German for “devil.” I didn’t intend this as an Easter egg, though, nor any of the other names in the adventure. As for the others, Steinhager is German gin that I became well acquainted with on a visit there, Ruggbrod is a Danish form of pumpernickel, and Magirius came from Magirius Deutz, a German brand of truck that I remembered seeing in England from time to time.

Klaus Schattiger’s name translates as “shady,” as befits his nature, while the magistrate is called Richter, which means magistrate. Doctor Malthusius was named after a friend’s Call of Cthulhu character, who in turn was named after someone moderately famous I think, but I must confess to ignorance there. Elvyra Kleinestun’s name literally means “Dolittle,” though so far as I know she neither spoke with animals nor bombed Tokyo. Jim and Phil wrote her in later as a link into Death on the Reik.

The street names in Bögenhafen are more literal, as far as my pocket German dictionary could take me. Handwerker Bahn means “street of the artisans”, Hafenstrasse means “dock street”, and so on. I couldn’t resist calling a street in the metalworker’s quarter Eisen Bahn (literally “iron road”; it is German for railway), or calling the town square Dreiecke Platz (“triangle square” — I never did well at geometry), but that’s about it. The idea for calling the watch barracks on the west bank Fort Blackfire came from an old movie called Fort Apache — the Bronx, about a New York police station surrounded by hostile, lawless territory.

As for the name of Bögenhafen itself, I intended it to mean something like “the port at the bend of the river.” On a trip to Sweden I mentioned earlier, I found out that with the umlaut above the “o,” to Swedish eyes the name read as “the gay port,” But I maintain that in Reikspiel it means “the port at the bend of the river” and that’s the end of it!

So there you are. That’s everything I can remember after all this time, but perhaps some of you will have found other gags and howlers in the text. If you have, please share them with the rest of us in the comments!

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WFRP 1 Easter Eggs: The Rulebook

A lot has been written over the years about the Easter eggs and in-jokes that were scattered throughout Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay’s first edition. Between 1997 and 2001, I wrote three articles for the excellent Warpstone magazine, telling what I remembered. Now it’s more than twenty years later, and Warpstone is long out of print, and people still seem interested in my memories of those far-off days, I’ve decided to revisit the subject, book by book, over the next few weeks. Some posts will be longer than others, inevitably, but hopefully all of them will be interesting – and who knows? Maybe you’ll find something that you hadn’t noticed before.

Let’s start with the core rulebook.

Starting with the cover art, the severed head on the Goblin’s banner is a self-portrait of artist John Sibbick. The warrior fighting the Ogre is Bryan Ansell.

A Right Bunch of Characters

The career illustrations, by Tony Ackland, feature the likenesses of several Games Workshop notables, not always in the most flattering light!

The Bawd is a portrait of Richard Halliwell, who was known for his exploits in and around Nottingham’s nightlife. The sign over the door in this picture reads “Ye Olde Den of Iniquity.”

The Beggar has the face of John Blanche. There was occasional friction between John and Tony, since they had pretty much an opposite approach to art, life and everything else. The illustration for the Megalomania derangement also bears a certain resemblance to John, probably because of some piece of office politics at the time.

The Scribe is Rick Priestley, who did most of the writing on the Warhammer miniatures games as well as writing the first draft of WFRP. Inscribed on the side of his desk is “Rank Xerox”, which was the brand of typesetter GW used at the time.

The Charlatan is Bryan Ansell again. The paper he is holding is “The All-Purpose Unsolicited Testimonial” – obviously from a satisfied customer!

The Cleric is Richard Ellard, who was the manager of the GW Design Studio at the time. The holy symbol hanging on his chest incorporates the Volkswagen logo, in tribute to his beloved (and far too fast) car of the time.

The Illusionist in the magic chapter is based on Steve Jackson – the British one, who co-founded Games Workshop and co-wrote the Fighting Fantasy gamebook series, rather than the American one, who founded Steve Jackson Games and wrote GURPS.

There are a couple of other hidden celebrities, too.

The Bounty Hunter looks a little like Clint Eastwood’s “Man With No Name” character from the Sergio Leone westerns, and the Tomb Robber (who also appears in the illustration for the Spot Traps skill) looks something like Indiana Jones.

The illustration for the Shadowing skill bears a striking resemblance to the actor Humphrey Bogart, in his roles as Raymond Chandler’s detective Philip Marlowe and Dashiell Hammet’s detective Sam Spade. The writing over the door here reads “House of Ill Repute.”

The original GW hardbound edition included a number of color plates, including “Evil Races” by Bob Naismith. The ghoul bears a distinct resemblance to Margaret Thatcher – or at least, to the puppet version of her in Spitting Image, a popular satirical TV show of the time. She was still Britain’s Prime Minister in 1986, and a very divisive figure.

Arcane Writings

Whenever you see a book, a scroll or an inscription in a WFRP illustration, pause for a moment and take a good look. It’s amazing what you’ll find – although you’ll need a good eye to pick out the writing in some of the smaller images.

The Alchemist in the advanced careers section has a number of interesting books on his shelf. In additon to a bound collection of Playboy, the titles read “The Electron Microscope,” “A Quick Guide to Quantum Physics,” “Do-it-Yourself Nuclear Fission,” “Organic Polymer Chemistry,” and “How to Blow Up…” (we’ll never know what, since his head is in the way).

The Lawyer in the same section has a book under his arm which will no doubt prove invaluable – it’s called “101 Easy Ways to Pervert Justice”.

The books for the Wizard in the advanced careers section are somewhat more basic – “Magics” and “Book of Base Metals”. However, the wizard at the start of the Magic chapter has a more advanced library, including the “Necronomicon” and the “Book of Eibon”. No wonder WFRP is often compared to Call of Cthulhu!

Dave Andrews’ magician in the section on Grimoires has some fairly standard-looking magical books: “1001 Spells”, the “Book of Base Metal” again, “Arcane Magic. Vol Ill”, and the ever-popular “Total Mayhem and Destruction”. But look closer – you can just make out the first couple of lines of the parchment at the bottom right of the picture: “Once upon a time, there were three bears…”

The Writers Were No Better

Don’t think the artists had all the fun, though. The writers found plenty of opportunities to add jokes and pop-culture references.

WFRP’s career system is one of its most distinctive features, and many players have said that the large number of colorful careers is among their favorite aspects of the game. Some of this color came right from the fevered imaginations of the design team, but many careers were actually inspired by the street life of Nottingham. Agitators, Bunko Artists, Jugglers, Pavement Artists and even the odd Seer could be found on the streets and squares of Nottingham in the early 80s — I’ve no idea if they’re still there, but I’ve never seen such an assortment and concentration in one place.

The skill Flee! allegedly originated when Richard Halliwell discovered (outside a nightclub, so the story goes) that it is possible to run faster than you ever thought possible if there’s a clear threat to life and limb bearing down on you. I have no idea if this is true, but Hal did seem to have a rather interesting life at that time. You’ll recall that the picture of the Bawd is based on him.

What’s in a Name?

The Chariots of the Frogs joke with the Old Slann has passed into legend, but there are plenty of other quips in the World Guide — mostly in the place names. Rick gave free rein to his rampant xenophobia (defined, in his case, as a deep-seated distrust of anyone not born in Lincolnshire), and the results are there for all to see — if you know how to read them. This is what I can remember of the gags that are hidden in the World Guide — there may well be more.

The River Ois, for example, is based on the Nottinghamshire dialect word wazz, which means… well, what dogs do to trees.

And Bordeleaux, when pronounced with a mock-French accent, becomes bordello, as befits a city noted for its dens of vice. Remember, this was a time before Grail Knights and the like. Morceaux, of course, is named after the French word for pieces — don’t ask me why — and Sannez looks like it might have something to do with sanitation, but I don’t remember Rick telling me anything about it.

Estalia fares little better. The name of Bilbali is loosely based on Bilbao, but owes more to an old music-hall song titled “Won’t You Come Home, Bill Bailey” — that’s a strange one, even for Priestley. Magritta takes its name from the Margarita, and the Abasko mountains take their name from Tabasco sauce — though what the Spanish connection is there I couldn’t tell you.

A few changes had to be made to Tilea. The Pirate Isle was originally called Mafea, but that seemed a little too obvious so it was changed to Sartosa. And Miragliano was originally called Gauno, but so many people didn’t notice the anagram and read it as Guano that we decided to change the name. And as many people already know, Remas was named (with a little misspelling) after Remus, the brother of Romulus who gave his name to Rome. So far as I know, though the “Reman Empire” never sprung to mind — we had a vague notion that there was a classical empire to go along with the Classical language, but that was all.

The Imperial capital also had a change of name to Altdorf. It was originally called Carlsburg — not a million miles away from a well-known brand of lager — but that name was also canned (pun intended) as too obvious. Middenheim made it through, though — midden being an archaeological term for a refuse heap or pit. Rick, Nigel Stillman, and I were all archaeologists before moving into games. What that says about archaeology, or games, or the three of us, I shudder to think. Moot is an Anglo-Saxon word for a meeting, especially a council meeting or county court, which made it an easy candidate to replace Tolkien’s Shire as a name for the Halfling homeland. The name of the River Reik is obvious — too obvious, perhaps, with hindsight.

The Oldenhaller Contract

This is where the WFRP tradition of bad NPC names started, with Grolsch van Eyk in the very first scene. The name of the Reaver’s Return is taken from the Rover’s Return, the local pub on Coronation Street, Britain’s longest-running soap opera. The Deutz Elm is named after Dutch Elm disease, and based on the message boards that Hal saw while youth hosteling round Europe. I don’t think any of them had ads from people wanting to hire mercenaries, though.

And that’s it for the rulebook. Next time, I’ll start on the Enemy Within campaign.

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Lost Warhammer: Heroes for Hire

The ad that got me thinking.

before I start, I should acknowledge that the first part of the title was stolen from Gideon’s excellent Awesome Lies blog. As part of his mission to document the complete and utter history of Warhammer in all its incarnations, he has a series of posts on projects that never made it to print – and there were plenty of those. I’ve contributed to it here and there, but that’s only one reason to check it out. Find it here.

My recent post on Ogres and Trolls, and especially the ad pictured above, stirred some long-dormant neurons and reminded me of another of my project proposals that went nowhere.

Fans of Warhammer’s second edition (by which I mean the battle game, not WFRP 2nd edition) will remember Regiments of Renown: those boxed sets containing a unit of troops with a leader, a musician, and a standard bearer – and a short, frequently silly story on the back of the box.

Bugman’s Dwarf Rangers is one of the best-known Regiments of Renown.

There were quite a few of these sets in the period immediately before Warhammer 3rd edition came out, and it often fell to me to write the box text. In fact, I got to write a lot of box text and ad text at that time, including one memorable occasion where I wrote a full-page at for White Dwarf while a taxi sat idling outside reception to take the finished page – a last-minute replacement – to the printers. No pressure there!

But I digress.

Regiments of Renown had been a part of Warhammer since the Forces of Fantasy boxed supplement in 1984, and the range continued to expand throughout 1986 and 1987. To my surprise, though, there was no mention of them in 1987’s Ravening Hordes army lists, and I immediately proposed collecting all the box-back text into a book, and filling it out with some new regiments so that every army had a good number of options for these famous units. I even combed through the Citadel Miniatures catalogue and selected some figures that I thought could make new Regiments of Renown.

To me, it was a no-brainer: the bulk of the text was already written, the bulk of the units were already photographed, and the book would supplement the army lists, giving players new options and promoting the sales of the boxed sets. But I just couldn’t get anyone interested in the project, and like so many of my proposals, it went nowhere.

Then I got to write the ad at the top of this post, for two new Ogre character models. Skrag the Slaughterer was created by Jes Goodwin, and like everything Jes made the character came with a detailed backstory that I essentially transcribed for the ad. Hrothyogg was my own creation: I noticed that he was wearing the Belt of the Eater, which was already a famous Ogre artifact from having been worn by Goglfag, the leader of not one but two Ogre Regiments of Renown dating back to the earliest days of Warhammer. Based on that, I wrote the story of how Hrothyogg won the belt from Goglfag in an eating contest. It was all great world-building detail, and a good opportunity to flesh out (pun intended) Ogre culture as I worked on my proposal for an Ogre culture pack.

Then it hit me: if there are Regiments of Renown, why not also have Heroes for Hire? These could be character models (Major and Minor Heroes according to Warhammer convention of the time) that could be attached to any suitable unit as the leader? I spent the next few evenings at hone, hammering out the proposal for a separate book on my trusty Amstrad PCW-8256. I had previously been told that as a roleplaying specialist I “didn’t understand toy soldiers” – with the distinct implication that this did not bode well for my career at Games Workshop – and I was eager to jump at any chance to prove my worth by helping to boost miniature sales.

Once again, I turned to the Citadel Miniatures catalogue – or rather, I combed back through White Dwarf, The Citadel Journal, The Citadel Compendium, and every mail order flier I could find, and I put together a list and pictures of the most impressive character models to go alongside Skrag and Hrothoygg in this volume, which would be a companion to (or perhaps a section of) my proposed Regiments of Renown book. And, once again, the idea was turned down.

I enjoyed writing the box-back stories, and the ads, with their mixture of humor and world-building, but apparently doing anything more than that was straying out of my lane as a roleplaying writer, however good my intentions were.

I’m still a little sad about these two. They would have been a lot of fun to write, and I still think they would have helped shift some metal (the first plastics were still a little way off). I wish I still had the sample write-ups I put together for the proposals, but they stayed behind when I left GW and they’re probably lost for ever.

But maybe I was wrong. Maybe the boxed Regiments of Renown didn’t sell as well as loose miniatures, and maybe that’s why they were dropped in the third and subsequent editions of Warhammer. At this late date, we’ll probably never know.

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Vote for August’s Monster of the Month!

If you’re a paid member at any level, pop into the community lounge for your level and vote for August’s Monster of the Month!

This time around I’m leaving it entirely up to you, the members: the only stipulation is that the creature has to come from myth or folklore and it can’t be copyright of any publisher – though of course, having been published for any game does not necessarily exclude any creature. Other than that, it’s completely open!

So go on: what creature would you like to be the next Monster of the Month? Let me know!

The Monster of the Month Club is a Patreon campaign that offers backers playable information on creatures from worldwide myth and folklore in a unique, system-agnostic format that has been tested successfully with the world’s most popular tabletop roleplaying rulesets (and some fairly obscure ones). Each month, backers will receive a deeply-researched, 4-6-page monster treatment in PDF format, consisting of:

• Basic description
• System-agnostic game statistics
• Basic and optional skills and traits, based on primary sources
• Adventure seeds for fantasy, historical, and modern-day settings
• And where available:
o Case studies from myth and folklore
o Variants from around the world
o Other points of lore that do not fit anywhere else
• Evocative art from public-domain sources

They can also join other backers in a dedicated Discord server to discuss their own experiences, swap advice on converting to specific game systems – and, at higher levels, to request treatments of their favorite creatures from their favorite myths and legends.

The Monster of the Month Club is present across most popular social media platforms @MotMClub, and maintains mailing lists for press and reviewers as well as for members.

For more information, email RPGMonsterClub@yahoo.com

Links:
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WFRP 1 Memories: Ogres and Trolls

Ogre priest by Tony Ackland, from the Doomstones adventure Blood in Darkness.

Ogres were first presented as playable characters in WFRP in 2021, when Cubicle 7 published Archives of the Empire, Volume II. I had been advocating for this since 1987, but apart from some fan works like this one, nothing happened in that direction for almost 35 years.

When we put together the core rulebook for WFRP 1st edition in 1986, Ogres were included in the Bestiary chapter, just as they had been in countless games going all the way back to White Box D&D. But something about the way Ogres looked in WFRP made me think of them differently. The way that Citadel Ogre miniatures were depicted in their dress and weaponry spoke to closer ties with the Old World. In 1987, Ravening Hordes for Warhammer 2nd edition listed Ogres as mercenaries, available to a variety of armies – but not the Empire. Despite this, an Ogre mercenary named Golthog appeared in Power Behind the Throne, seemingly living and working within the Empire without any problems. Looking back, it was probably this that decided me to push for Ogres to become playable.

I did what I always did when I had an idea: I put a proposal together with an outline of what I wanted to write, underpinned it with examples from Warhammer and WFRP publications and Citadel Miniatures ads, and passed it up the chain of command. In almost every other case, my proposals were greeted with a deafening silence, but after a pause of a year or so I was called into a meeting with Phil Gallagher, who was now in management, and a few others whose names I don’t remember.

I was already trying to build out Ogre lore when I wrote this ad for White Dwarf 79.

Nobody liked the idea of making Ogres playable in WFRP, I was told, but I had been banging on about them for so long and if I really wanted to write about them so much, here was an opportunity.

From somewhere, management had had the idea of writing books of pure lore and art – an idea that was not to reach fruition until many years later with Black Library tomes like The Loathsome Ratmen from 2004. Anyway, I was contracted to write a book on Ogres – but I was strictly forbidden to even hint at any rules, and I had to cover Trolls as well. It wasn’t what I wanted, but it was the closest I had come to a win with any of my proposals so I went away and wrote it in my free time while Flame was getting started.

I turned the manuscript over in late January of 1989, and had a frustrating series of meetings with Phil and others in which I was told to rewrite the entire thing but nobody would tell me what needed to change. Looking back, I suspect that Bryan Ansell had read it, said to Phil or someone else, “It needs to be rewritten, you know,” and that someone had nodded loyally and been afraid to ask what needed to change.

Bryan was ruling by fear at that time, and would occasionally fire someone on the spot simply to maintain his reputation, or so it seemed to me – just as Blackbeard admitted to shooting one of his crew from time to time “so they don’t forget who I am.” Against that background, no one wanted to admit to any kind of ignorance that might get them sacked for “not understanding Warhammer.” But I could be entirely wrong about that.

All I really know is that I never found out what needed to change or why – being told literally “I’m not going to tell you that” – which left me no option but to throw up my hands in defeat. I focused on my work for Flame, and the Ogres and Trolls book remained in limbo when I left Games Workshop in October of 1990.

Fast-forward to 2019, when I was talking to Cubicle 7 and starting to develop the Enemy Within Director’s Cut. I had kept a dot-matrix printout of the Ogres and Trolls manuscript, so I sent it to Dom McDowall in case it might be useful, or at least interesting. I heard nothing back, as I recall, and little to none of it appeared in Archives of the Empire, Volume II. But then, the Ogre Kingdoms had been developed in the intervening 30-plus years, and a lot else had changed.

I did publish one out-take on my blog, with some musings from the famed Bretonnian chef Marcel de Morceaux on the challenges of cooking Troll meat (here), but nothing else from the book has seen the light of day. Maybe it never will, and maybe that’s a good thing: it was not an enjoyable project, and it’s not likely to be my best work.

The only other thing of note that I remember is that I planned a particular skill for Ogre characters when I was still hoping to give them careers and rules. It still makes me smile when I think of it, so here’s an attempt at rules for all four editions of WFRP. It might be treated as a racial skill, available to all Ogre PCs, or it might be restricted to certain careers, such as Bodyguard or Racketeer. See what you think. Oh, and I was reading a lot of Terry Pratchett at the time when I first came up with it, and I’m sure that show in the tone.

Apologies if some of this post came across as sour grapes or whining, but I hope the new skill/talent helps with any bad taste it left behind. Leave a comment to left me know what you think of it, and how it might be improved.

Loom

Loom is treated as a skill or a talent, depending on the edition of the rules being used.

Ogres are big – everyone knows that. Loom is simply looking big on purpose, especially when standing behind someone else, such as a Human crime lord. It is unusual in that it benefits another character rather than the Ogre PC themselves.

WFRP 1st Edition Rules

When another character is attempting any Test with the objective of intimidating someone, the Ogre can confer a 10% bonus to that test simply by standing behind them and looking big.

WFRP 2nd Edition Rules

When another character is making an Intimidate check, the Ogre can grant them the benefits of the Menacing Talent simply by standing behind them and looking big. If they already have Menacing, its effects are doubled.

WFRP 3rd Edition Rules

When another character is making an Intimidate check, the Ogre can add one more die to their pool simply by standing behind them and looking big.

WFRP 4th Edition Rules

When another character is making an Intimidate check, the Ogre can grant one more level of the Menacing Talent simply by standing behind them and looking big.

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June’s Monster of the Month: The Manticore

Chosen by a vote of paid members, June’s Monster of the Month is the Manticore. Think you know all about it from fantasy game monster books? Think again!

https://shorturl.at/3DxXb

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