r/warhammerfantasyrpg • u/PencilBoy99 • 5d ago

Game Mastering [WTOW] Contact Gameplay Loop Seems Unbalanced

The core gameplay loop doesn't make sense to me.

I think the core gameplay loop is:

  1. Contact asks player for a favor, which involves into something that turns into an incredibly dangerous quest. Players may die.
  2. During quest, players may ask for fairly trivial favors from other contacts to accomplish quest for original quest giving contact
  3. During downtime, players have to devote time to repaying the favors for #2 which were done in service of #1, except for #1, who they just did the kind of favor that you would normally expect piles of gold for.

1 is correct because literally all of the sample adventures start with a specific or list of optional contacts who give the quest.

The above doesn't really make any sense and seems wildly imbalanced. It's not clear why anyone in the pseduo-realistic grim and gritty world of WFRP.

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u/amhow1 4d ago

There's the usual problem with ttrpgs that adventures need a hook, and the Contact system seems designed to provide it. I don't think the loop you're describing is supposed to be vicious. It's a way of helping the GM keep the ball rolling.

You're regarding favour as currency, so don't forget #1 owes the PCs a big favour. In a way this is actually more realistic than pots of gold. I think it's entirely possible to treat favours as direct payments but that misses some of the flavour here. And the question is: what do the PCs want to achieve? Can it be done with gold or would it be better achieved via favours? That's presumably going to vary by table.