Wolfgang's Guide To Screwing Your Fellow PCs

The "Roadside Inn" Scam

Now over the course of our adventuring career we've been lucky enough to come into some money, money which I then proceeded to spend on booze, drugs, entertaining and fine clothes.

Wolfgang, not surprisingly, didn't.

Now we knew that he'd bought a roadside coaching Inn in Delbreth, his home town. He'd left his wife there to run it (at least I take my missus about with me, even if she had got a bit maimed by a few unfortunate incidents) along with a semi-demon thing he'd adopted (don't ask).

What we didn't know was that this wasn't the only roadside Inn that he'd purchased. In fact, each time we passed through a town, he'd generally sneak off, buy a place, install a manager, and leave - promising to come back in a few months to pick up his share of the profits.

Now when, in a few months, we were passing through and he needed to pick up the profits, did he mention that he had to nip off to one of the Inns to pick something up? No, of course not. He didn't need to, did he?

Because we were staying in the fucking Inn.

That's right. At each stop, he'd say: "Hey Guys, that Inn looks nice, why don't we stay there?"

And then snigger behind our backs as we paid his manager full board.

Bastard.

This was a scam he kept secret for around a year of real time (say 40 or 50 sessions) and even then we only found out, out-of-character.

The "Number Of Attacks" Scam

One of the most important attributes a WFRP character has is his number of attacks. A starting character has one attack per round. Later, as you proceed through the career structure, you can gain a second attack, and perhaps even a third. As you can imagine, extra attacks massively increase your effectiveness in combat. If you make two attacks to your opponent's one, you're likely to wear him down long before he wears you down, especially as characters have to sacrifice attacks if they want to parry.

This particular scam is one which TAFKAC had been running for more than a year of real-time (and we probably play around 40 or 50 sessions a year of WFRP).

Me and John are playing rogue-fighter types, so we were fairly useful in combat. After perhaps 70 or 80 sessions (we've played this campaign a lot) we'd managed to claw ourselves up to three attacks per round.

Wolfgang, by contrast, was a wizard who'd only done a few non-wizard careers such as Templar, and so had only two attacks per round. This was quite a disadvantage, as we get in some pretty extreme fights, and since there's only three of us, we all have to get involved.

One time, for example, we were walking along a causeway in a swamp, when some tentacled creature grabbed each one of us, and hauled us off the path. The three of us were each held under the water, drowning, hacking away at the tentacles with everything we had. I really thought we'd bought it, but John's character Ulrich managed finally to hack his way free, make his way to the surface, gasp some air into his screaming lungs, then dive down to hack me and Wolfgang loose.

Of course, when I say that we were hacking away with everything we had, what I meant to say is that me and John assumed that we were hacking away with everything we had. Given that we were like, dying.

Then one day we were in an even worse combat with some kind of elemental creature, and John and me had been pretty badly knocked about. So Wolfgang casts a spell on himself called Hammerhand.

"Hammerhand..? That's the one that doubles your attacks, isn't it?" asks John.

"Err... Yeah," admits TAFKAC, in a tone which suggests that he'd rather John hadn't known that.

"First attacks!" says General Tangent (the GM). We all take our first attacks, followed by the elemental creature.

"Second attacks!" Again, we all take our second attacks.

"Third attacks!" Me and John take our third and final attacks, along with Wolfgang. "Ah!" we think, that's because of the Hammerhand doubling his attacks!

"Fourth attacks!" General Tangent often used to say that, which always used to piss us off, because how hard was it for him to remember that we only had three attacks? But this time, for once, it was justified, because Wolfgang's two attacks doubled gave him four attacks.

So Wolfgang takes his fourth attack.

Then...

"Fifth attacks!"

And Wolfgang takes a fifth attack, which puts me and John deep into "What the fuck?" territory.

"Since when have you had three attacks?" we demand.

"Little while," says TAFKAC shrugging.

"Sixth attacks!" Wolfgang takes his sixth attack.

At this point me and John, a little pissed off about TAFKAC keeping it secret that he had three attacks, pick up our dice for the start of the next round.

"Seventh attacks!"

TAFKAC picks up his dice and throws.

WHAT THE FUCK!

"You've got four attacks?"

"Yeah."

"But no-one has four attacks! Well... no-one except for assassins!"

"Yeah."

"What?"

Turns out that about 60 sessions previously, while we were "encountering" Luigi Belladona, crime boss of a city down south, Wolfgang had been recruited, and trained, by said Luigi as an assassin.

Something that he'd neglected to mention to us. And to preserve that secret, he'd spent 60 sessions pretending to only have two attacks per round, when the truth was that he had four! Pretending even when we were fighting for our lives.

This was why General Tangent sometimes asked for fourth attacks.

Well as you can imagine, it led to a somewhat heated discussion, with a raking up of every single desperate combat we'd had since that time. ("What! Luigi trained you! But that was *ages* ago! How many times have we been in the shit since then, and you just fucking sat there when you had two extra attacks?").

And the final kicker? We only know this out-of-character. As far as our characters know, the wizard cast a spell which allowed him to move four times as fast as he normally can...

Bastard.

The "Oh Dear, You Appear To Be On Trial For Murder" Scam

This is another one that involves events happening many sessions ago, which we only recently found out about (again out-of-character).

Those of you who've read the earlier article about Fat Gregor's escapades may recall the line:

It was all going splendidly until he hit a spot of legal bother (I was fitted up). He was saved by the intervention of a psychotic Tillean mafia family, who saved Gregor from a hanging by purchasing a worthless but technically valid title for him (making him Sir Gregor of Ulm).

Yep. Someone had been brutally murdered, and I was the one who'd ended up on trial for it. Luigi, with a bit of help from my faithful comrades, managed to get me out from under the hangman's noose by purchasing a noble title for me.

And who was the scumbag assassin who'd actually killed the bloke?

Yeah. You've guessed it.

Bastard.

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