Several of the early WFRP adventures have become well-known classics. Scenarios like ‘Night of Blood’ or ‘A Rough Night at the Three Feathers’ have been reprinted in anthologies such as The Restless Dead and Apocrypha Now, and even been converted to later editions of the game.
There are, though, a number of early scenarios that have (for various reasons) largely been forgotten. I thought I would take a look at some of them in this series of posts.
THE BLACK KNIGHT
‘Night of Blood’ is usually regarded as the first WFRP adventure to appear in White Dwarf. However, there is another scenario that can claim to be the first. ‘The Black Knight’ appeared in White Dwarf 83 (November 1986), four months before ‘Night of Blood’. It is not a pure WFRP scenario. It contains statistics for three systems: Pendragon, AD&D and WFRP1. In fact, the context makes it likely that the adventure was originally written for Pendragon. But it is the first White Dwarf adventure playable with WFRP.
Warning. Spoilers follow.
A black knight has stationed himself at a ford and is blockading the village of Oakhelm (I’ve a feeling we’re not in the Old World anymore). He is demanding the return of “swords”.
In fact, there are seven knights, each guarding the ford in turn. They are members of the Order of the Silver Moon and are seeking vengeance for Oakhelm’s historic betrayal of other members of the order. When passing knights had saved the villagers from invading trolls, the villagers repaid them by leaving their wounded to die. The knights also believe the villagers stole the wounded knights’ swords.
The truth is that the swords were taken by a wizard who had driven the trolls to attack. The wizard was subsequently killed by a rockfall in the caves where he lived.
All this sets up a familiar and unremarkable trawl through a small dungeon. There are a few nice touches (I quite like the undead fish), but it is easy to see why this adventure has largely been forgotten. Nonetheless it is an interesting window into the beginnings of WFRP1 and a time before its setting and tone was established.
Life before sewers and skaven: ‘The Black Knight’, White Dwarf 83 (November 1986)
The next post in this series is here.
Title image from Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975). Used without permission. No challenge intended to the rights holders.
AWESOME LIES 
Always been meaning to run this as a one-shot. Could easily be set in the Old World. Some kind of Templar organisation slowly being corrupted….
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I am pretty sure that this was submitted as a Pendragon adventure. November was when the WFRP 1 rulebook first reached the shops, and there was a need to promote it in White Dwarf but we had little to no support material ready to go.
It’s more than likely that WD editor Mike Brunton took a Pendragon adventure from an outside contributor and added stats for AD&D and WFRP, though I’m not sure anyone would remember after all this time.
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I never played it but have read it. I can’t say I’m surprised it has been forgotten. It seemed pretty uninspired for any system – the sort of thing WD used to print as filler.
WD printed a few multi-system WFRP adventures (which you may well be getting round to). I seem to recall the Robin Hood adventure was an intriguing use of the system for a very different world to the Old World and Letters From A Foreign Land (?) suffered from some underdevelopment but could be made into a good adventure for Kislev or the Border Princes, perhaps.
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Yes, there were three multi-system WFRP adventures in WD. The Robin Hood adventure was ‘On Ealden Byrgen’ (in WD89). Personally I would consider it the weakest of the three. The other one I’ll come to….
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I stuck the abbey from ‘Letters From A Foreign Land’ onto one of the maps I did for Tim Eccles’ campaign books – I forget which one. It was really just a little easter egg.
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