Power Behind the Throne is the third fourth fifth next part of The Enemy Within campaign, written for Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 1st Edition. The version I am reviewing also contains a 'linking' adventure to get the player character more seamlessly from the area in which the previous installment, Death on the Reik, takes place to that in which Power Behind the Throne takes place - Middenheim.
n.b. I have tried to avoid spoilers in this review.
This linking adventure is called Carrion Up the Reik. It is okay, as far it goes. Structurally it aims to do two things: firstly to give a more solid reason to actually leave the area they had been adventuring in and secondly to get rid of the players' boat, which they are very likely to have acquired during Death on the Reik. It provides a tolerably good way of doing this. The details of the adventure are workmanlike rather than inspiring. They do contain a couple of links into past adventures for those who like some of the loose threads to tie together, in particular in linking the Enemy Within campaign to the adventure in the rulebook, the Oldenhaller Contract. Towards the end of Carrion Up the Reik there is also some slight foreshadowing of certain events in Power Behind the Throne and Empire in Flames. Some people seem to really like this stuff, although I can't get that bothered about it. None of these hints - with one possible exception - are of any consequence and linking the Oldenhaller Contract to the Enemy Within at this point just doesn't matter. What the campaign was missing was a good way to link the Oldenhaller Contract to Mistaken Identity but as far as I am aware, that was never done.
Carrion Up the Reik is generally a 'social' facing adventure, although there is a combat sequence which is quite good fun, if very dangerous (depending upon how the players tackle it). WFRP 1e was never known for its game balance, quite the contrary (and that is usually fine) but even a single 'Fireball' spell can be pretty damaging and multiple enemies who all have access to 'Fireball' is a much, much tougher proposition. I am not quite sure that scenario writers always appreciated this. It doesn't even come with a high cost in ingredients or magical stamina. I also don't think that the starting set-up is that well described: there seems to be a slight mismatch between the overall numbers of combatants and the detail given of their individual starting positions.
Anyway, for players most interested in the social roleplaying side, there are some good opportunities to get more information about the game world from fairly knowledgeable and important NPCs, as well as making a potentially very important contact.
Incidentally, there was an entirely different 'linking' adventure published in an old issue of White Dwarf magazine called 'Grapes of Wrath'. I know you can get it converted to 2nd edition in the 'Plundered Vaults' adventure compendium. That is a rather better adventure, but rather less good at providing a meaningful link from Death on the Reik to the rest of the campaign.
Anyway, after this the 'Power Behind the Throne' adventure begins. The overall scenario is absolutely fantastic. Set during the annual carnival, there is a hidden evil plot with an appropriate hidden evil mastermind about to come to fruition. The plot itself is well thought through and populated with a wide cast of interesting characters. So far, so good. If things go broadly to plan, there are a couple of excellent set-pieces, but it is a very open adventure that can be tackled in a number of different ways with success, although they are all equally valid. There are a number of interesting and different possible outcomes too. The carnival setting is very well done too, with some things there as atmosphere (but are equally places where the PCs can target NPCs for interaction) and some things which the PCs can participate in directly (e.g. an archery tourney, very much along the lines of that in the Robin Hood stories) and some indirectly (e.g. through gambling on the results). I think this combination of plot, characters, setting and openness accounts for the love which seems to be still felt for it today.
One thing I really liked about the characterization was the use of NPC "Reactions" in their description. This is quite simple, but it gives bonuses, penalties and alternatives to social tests based on sex/gender, race, alignment and characteristics. Instead of using 'Fellowship' as the base characteristic for social tests with some characters, it might be an average of 'Fellowship' and 'Intelligence' for example; or with some NPCs, men may be able to use 'Leadership' instead of 'Fellowship'. It also introduces the idea of double-strength skills, which would become part of the core mechanics in 2nd edition. The only shame is that neither of the above became part of the basic rules so that PCs can use them - so a Dwarf might react particularly well to Female Halflings with high 'Dexterity' or whatever. There wasn't even any GM guidance for using it really. But it creates interesting social dynamics, where one prominent NPC reacts well to Dwarves, one reacts badly to them, but those two NPCs are friends and often together. That kind of complexity can be useful in creating interesting social situations. It also sets specific disadvantages to playing certain races in certain situations, which is currently mainly limited to (probably) lower Fate points and some not very important psychology rules.
However, there are two specific issues with this adventure which I feel are quite large design failures. Firstly, there is no real adequate hook into the adventure. The 'hook' from Death on the Reik is explicitly rejected in the book as a viable way into the actual adventure in this section of the campaign. The writers obviously recognize this, explicitly acknowledging that the group will initially be wandering around 'trying to find where the adventure is' and try to shoe-horn ways into it, but even these work-arounds don't really work: there is simply no justification for a group of itinerant wanderers to try and change the tax policies of a city state. There are no mercenary reasons for doing so, and no obvious reasons for the adventurers to try and change tax policy since they are going to leave the city at the end of the carnival anyway. If running this with a group of younger gamers (as I have done), I think that the GM will actively need one of the NPCs to approach the PCs at some early point and actually ask/hire them to investigate something or someone which will expose at least a little bit of the plot. Alternatively, there needs to be a way in which carrying out the hook from Death on the Reik actually helps in getting embroiled into the main adventure in Power Behind the Throne.
The second issue is that the book contains an interesting mechanic...which proves to be totally pointless. The mechanic itself is well thought out: it gives certain NPCs a number of influence points with the ruler and if someone wants to propose or repeal a policy or law, then they need to gain sufficient influence points to do so. This is great stuff and is easily portable into most game systems, I should imagine. Where it falls down however is that the way that the plot is structure, there is no chance to use the mechanic, before a more dramatic resolution occurs anyway. The group can actually 'fail' lots of the adventure and still bring it to a very successful conclusion, since the key pivot points of the dramatic plot are actually very few in number. I am not sure that the designers quite realized this, perhaps they changed some crucial aspects quite late in the writing of the book. I don't want to give any spoilers in this review but if you have the book and intend to GM it, you can prove this to yourself by working back from the successful resolution and working out exactly what needs to happen to bring it about.
This second issue should be largely invisible to the players, so I suppose it doesn't matter too much, but the issue of the weak hook into the adventure. Maybe some GMs might rationalize this by saying that if the adventurers don't get involved, then they should feel pretty bad when bad things happen to the game world later, but since the players won't actually be playing in that environment, I hardly think this matters. Lack of good hooks was a recurring problem in the campaign, but this is the worst one I think.
An entire city module accompanied Power Behind the Throne. This was a guidebook with adventure seeds, Middenheim: City of Chaos. This is not necessary for playing the adventure, although it does help to flesh out the city somewhat. A review of this may happen at some point, as will a play-through of Power Behind the Throne...
There is a much more comprehensive set of WFRP reviews on this excellent website here; I really recommend it if you are into WFRP 1st edition, it is a great read.
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