Fear the Worst
reviewed by Ulrich Inhofner

Warhammer Fantasy RPG at its best. You´ve got it all, creative story, necessity of roleplaying, fights, a feast, chaos mutants and even a troll-slayer.

The adventure takes place in only a few different locations, the main story happening in the little Reikland town of Heideldorf. There is a great description of NPC´s and their actions as the story unfolds, so expect an adventure that is living from the GM´s ability to convince/force the characters to actually play their characters. The adventure starts with the usual information gathering scheme and this is followed by a faster and faster going pace. The end is fully left open and is depending on the former actions of the characters. Either a nice provincial town will be destroyed completely or the players are the heroes of the day. All the possible outcomes are provided in detail.

It is recommended by Hogshed to settle it somewhere between the beginner adventures like "Enemy within" or as a warm-up for the "Doomstones" campaign. Most of the NPC´s can easily be handled by a beginners group with only a few spent advancement picks. If you want to play it with a medium-experienced group, you can raise the NPC´s stats perfectly without shedding atmosphere and realism of the encounters.

(If you want to play this adventure with your char, don´t read beyond this point)

Oh my, this story was written by a really chaos-infected mind, indeed! As the title of the adventure hints at, fear the Wurst, umm, Worst. Wurst is the german word for Sausage if you may know. The only thing the Empire really knows about Heideldorf is the famous Heideldorfer Sonderwurst and the merchant, Heinz Schiller, who distributes it across the empire.

The recipe of this sausage is not for everybodys taste. Even Altdorfs nobles may shake their heads and wonder about its delicious sweet and sour taste. Yes, you are guessing right, no artificial spices are providing its exclusive aroma, it consists entirely of human flesh. Heinz Schiller turned into a cannibal after slaying a poor minstrel who had a romance with his wife. The deed drove him completely insane. And as we all know, killing a human beeing gets easier with each victim, and so the growing demand for Heinz´s sausage meets no shortage of supply.

While more and more mercenaries are lured to Heideldorf by Heinz to be served as Sonderwurst later on, the players get their hands on a recruiting letter by him. Their task sounds simple: Get those bandits in the nearby ruined keep. What they don´t know about is the special arrangement that Schiller has got with a band of chaos mutants living there to supply him with the necessary ingedients for Sonderwurst.

Another danger the players will face is the not quite satisfied customer of Schiller, Ernst Gottlieb. This Nuln crime-lord had the discussable honour to receive a shipment of sausage that was poisoned with chaos mutant meat, as the colloberating mutants in Heideldorfs Black Rock Keep slew two of their kind to provide Schiller. Ernst isn´t happy about the mutations he is suffering from this meal and his revenge will be setting an end to Heinz Schillers sausage production. He plans to sabotage the annual Wurstfest in Heideldorf by secretely providing another spice for the sausage, warpstone! This will for sure lead to the utterly destruction of the town. All this happens as our poor players march into Heideldorf. Will the Heideldorfer Sonderwurst satisfy their hunger for adventure?

• Creative story
• Adventure fits to most adventure groups
• Good description of NPC´s and their motivations
• Much fun for two to four evenings of playing
  

"Fear the Worst" © 2002 by Games Workshop, produced under license by Hogshead Ltd. Written by Michael D. Mears. "Fear the Worst" can be downloaded for free at http://www.hogshead.demon.co.uk/WFRP_Fear_the_Worst.zip