August 22, 2025 • 25 mins
What happens when a beloved classic gets reimagined three decades later? That's the question at the heart of my deep dive into Enemy in Shadows, Cubicle 7's director's cut of the legendary Enemy Within campaign for Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay.
As someone who first attempted to run this campaign as a 12-year-old back in 1988, this review comes from a place of both nostalgia and critical analysis. The original Shadows Over Bugenhaven was brilliant but chaotically organized – I spent half my time frantically flipping through pages, hunting for crucial information while my players waited. This new edition promises to maintain the brilliance while fixing those organizational nightmares.
The production values are gorgeous, with artwork that perfectly captures the grim darkness of the Warhammer world. The adventure structure has been significantly improved, and the story is refreshingly honest and properly Warhammer.
However, the book isn't without flaws. The "Grognard boxes" are problematic and the lack of a clear campaign vision is concerning.
So, how does the book fare? Tune in to find out!
Have you experienced The Enemy Within? We'd love to hear your thoughts on how this classic shaped your gaming experience!
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HOSTS: Iain Wilson, Steve McGarrity, Jason Downey
BACKGROUND MUSIC: David Renada (Find him at: davidrendamusic@gmail.com or on his web page).
TITLE, BREAK & CLOSEOUT MUSIC: Xylo-Ziko (Find them on their web page).
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:09):
Welcome to Roll2Save, the RPG history podcast,
warhammer Fantasy Roleplay.
Hello and welcome to anotherepisode of Roll to Save.
(00:30):
I'm your host, ian, and todaywe're reviewing something that's
very close to my heart Enemy inShadows.
The fourth edition director'scut of the legendary Enemy
Within campaign for WarhammerFantasy Roleplay the legendary
Enemy Within campaign forWarhammer fantasy role-playing.
Now I need to start with aconfession here.
(00:50):
This isn't just any review.
For me, this campaign well, thiscampaign basically shaped who I
am as a player in the gamesmaster.
Picture this.
It's 1988, I'm 12 years old andI convinced I know everything
about running games and I'mattempting to run the enemy
within for my friends, of course.
Back then I was working withwhat can only be described as
(01:14):
the organizational nightmarethat was the original Shadows
Over Bugenhafen Great adventure,but I spent half my time
frantically flipping throughpages mid-session, desperately
hunting for NPC stats or tryingto figure out what was supposed
to happen next.
Interestingly, though, in the80s that was just an accepted
(01:35):
fact.
Modules were usually brilliantbut utterly chaotic, and that's
just how things went.
So here we are, 30 plus yearslater, and Cubular 7 has given
us the director's cut of theanimation Shadows 30 years of
hindsight.
The mechanical improvements of4th edition Warhammer and the
(01:56):
promise of fixing all thoseorganisational issues that
plagued the original.
Oh, and a promise to wrap upthe campaign properly and make
the whole thing fit togethercoherently.
A little bit of an aside herefor those of you who aren't
overly familiar with the EnemyWithin campaign the original
(02:16):
edition had six chapters, but itkind of petered off after the
fourth chapter, mainly becauseGames Workshop realised that
they made more money sellingsmall plastic models than they
did in writing.
Long wiki books, disconnectedfrom what had gone before and
also left a ton of plot threadsdangling, things that were never
(02:46):
resolved, that seemed to beimportant elsewhere in the
campaign.
So big expectations for the newversion of the campaign.
Enemy in Shadows was the firstchapter written for the new
Enemy Within that would spanfive chapters and the promise
was that this definitivedirector's cut would address a
(03:08):
lot of the shortcomings of theoriginal.
So the big question is lookingat NME in shadows, does it
deliver, or are we just lookingat nostalgia wrapped up in
better packaging?
Let's get into it First.
(03:31):
Let's talk about what we'reactually getting here.
Enemy in Shadows is a lovelyhardback book containing the
first two adventures from theoriginal Enemy Within campaign,
mistaken Identity and ShadowsOver Buggenhaven, completely
updated for 4th edition.
Rules classic one.
(03:56):
The characters get involved ina plot where they're mistaken
for someone else, or rather oneof the number is mistaken for
someone else, and this dragsthem into a whole web of
conspiracy and intrigue that'sgoing to define the entire five
book campaign.
They start off coaching in thejourney through to the capital
city of altdorf, then theysettle into the trading down of
bugenhafen.
Here they get embroiled in afantastic investigation that is
(04:18):
much more Call of Cthulhu thanWarhammer, and they end up
investigating corruption at thehighest levels of society.
The production values here areabsolutely gorgeous.
The art throughout the bookperfectly captures that grim,
dark tone that makes Warhammerso special.
And if you spring for thecollector's edition, oh my
(04:42):
goodness, it's beautiful.
It also comes with handoutsthat genuinely enhance play
rather than just seeming to bepretty decorations.
But let's dig into the meat ofit.
The opening chapter, wanted BoldAdventurers, covers the classic
setup of a coach journey and aroadside encounter.
(05:03):
It gives people someinteresting NPCs to interact
with in the book.
It clearly details who theseguys are, what their motivations
are and some personality quirksto help the GM bring them to
life.
They feel like genuineencounters rather than just time
wasters that you'd put in topad out a session.
(05:23):
This is also where we begin tosee the grognard boxes, special
sections intended for veteranplayers.
We'll talk more about theselater on and I think in every
review that I do of this, I'llprobably end up bringing them up
, but I find them to be a littlebit problematic.
Anyway, come to them later.
(05:44):
The next chapter sees the firstcombat of the campaign, which
helps as a gentle introductionto Warhammer's sometimes crunchy
approach to combat, but it alsoreally helps establish the
atmosphere of the campaignWithout spoiling anything.
This really begins to set upthe tones of paranoia and
(06:04):
suspicion that should be eatingat your players, and it also
introduces the aspect of mutantsin the empire how they're
treated, how they're consideredand what actions they may take.
How they're treated, howthey're considered and what
actions they may take.
The next section sees theplayers arrive in the imperial
capital of Altdorf, and I reallylike how they present this.
It's the same as they did inthe original.
(06:26):
It gives them enoughinformation about the capital to
bring it to life, without beingexhaustive and having locations
where the players can justwander off here, there and
everywhere, and I think Cubicle7 would rather you bought their
book on Altdorf than publish itin here.
But the urban encounters arereally well structured.
It really sets up that feelingof a crowded, bustling
(06:48):
metropolis.
And this is where we get theintroduction to the bounty
hunter subplot from MistakenIdentity and it's handled with
appropriate menace.
But one of my favorite scenesin the whole book is when the
purple hand cultists try to makecontact with the party and one
of the characters who do youthink is someone else.
(07:09):
If you picture this, thecultists approach with secret
signs and coded phrasesexpecting recognition and your
player characters just stareblankly at them or in complete
confusion.
Meanwhile the cultists areequally baffled because their
contact isn't responding to therecognition signals.
It's a brilliant moment ofmutual bewilderment.
(07:31):
It really drives home the wholemistaken identity premise.
Bewilderment.
It really drives home the wholemistaken identity premise.
Both sides know something'swrong but neither understands
what, and all the while thebounty hunter subplot is weaving
through everything, adding alittle layer of paranoia.
But here's where I start to haveconcerns about the broader
campaign and I will say this I'mwriting this from hindsight in
(07:51):
that I have read all thechapters of the new Enemy Within
campaign.
But even when I first just readEnemy in Shadows I thought, oh,
hopefully this will pay offlater on.
There's a scene where thecharacters glimpse the Emperor
and there's a big point madethat this is a really important
scene.
You need to throw it in herebecause this will become really
(08:12):
important in future adventures.
Except it is never referencedagain in any of the adventures
that come along, so it feelsthat the campaign's writing
checks that it can't cash.
It also feeds my belief thatthis wasn't actually properly
thought out when it was firstmade, but we'll come on to more
(08:33):
of that later on the journey toBugenhafen that they go through.
It works well.
It builds up the atmosphere ofwhat the empire is like, it lets
the characters see someday-to-day life and it also
builds some tension as well.
The town of Weisbruck it getscompetent treatment as a
stopping point and while itfeels more functional than
(08:56):
memorable at first glance, it'sactually very clever world
building.
As I mentioned, I've gonethrough the other parts of the
enemy within campaign andWeissbrück gets revisited in
Death in the Rite.
So establishing it here as afamiliar location for the PCs is
much smarter because it meansthat it doesn't just appear at
some random dot on the map lateron.
(09:19):
Little touches like this reallyhelp bring the campaign alive
and make the world feel likeit's being lived in.
So once we've got through allof that, we get to the main meat
of Enemy in Shadows, which waswhat was formerly known as
Shadows over Bugenhafen.
I'm not going to spoil the plothere.
(09:40):
I'll be as spoiler free aspossible, because it's a really
nice adventure, really wellstructured investigation, and
people will still want to playit.
But this is also where thedirector's cut really shows its
worth compared to, as Imentioned before, the
organisational mess that was theoriginal.
Just to drive home here howmuch of an improvement this new
(10:04):
edition is, let me tell youabout how much of a mess the
original was.
I wrote a blog post about thisa few years ago after rereading
that book as an adult, and itreally made me realize just how
badly organized it was, and itkind of baffled me how my 12
year old self actually managedto run this.
(10:24):
So most adventures you'd expectto be laid out logically right,
and for Shadows Over Buggenhafenfor those of you who've played
it before I'd expect it to besomething like the introduction,
a guide to the city, a timeline, the adventure details, the
aftermath and any appendices.
Pretty simple, prettystraightforward, and instead
(10:44):
what you got was something muchmore like the introduction, a
rough timeline, the start of thecity guide, the start of the
adventure.
Then we cut to the story so far.
Then we get the continuation ofthe adventure.
Then cut to the story so far,then we get the continuation of
the adventure, then we get apullout section with more city
guide and some NPC stats, thenwe get a different timeline,
then we get a section on commonknowledge, then we get some more
(11:05):
adventure, then we get keylocations, then we got a
separate guide to the temples inthe city, then we get more
adventure, then we finally getthe aftermath.
It was exhausting to use.
Here's a perfect example of howbad it was.
So, again, without spoiling it,there's this crucial encounter
in the middle of the adventure,kind of beginning of the second
(11:27):
act, where the powers that beapproach the characters and
offer some assurance.
The usual hey, everything'sfine, nothing to see here.
Routine.
It's a pivotal moment and itgives the players a key contact
in the adventure who becomesinstrumental in the climax,
essential to the plot.
So where would you look forthis, you'd think the event
(11:49):
section, right?
Nope, well, maybe it's the npcsection, because this is a key
character.
Nope, and by the way, thatsection only featured three of
the three main NPCs.
The rest were sort of scatteredthroughout the book like
breadcrumbs.
Where you actually found thisreally crucial encounter was in
(12:11):
the key city location section.
And get this.
The timeline says that thisevent happens in the course of
their inquiries, implying it's areally important story beat.
But as it's written in the keylocations, it only triggers if
the players do one very specificthing.
If they don't, well, good luckin you running the climax,
(12:33):
unless you can find some otherway to finagle this guy in,
because without meeting this NPC, the players are really going
to struggle to get near thefinale.
Imagine if the Avengers inInfinity War and apologies if
you've never seen this film andhave no idea what I'm talking
about but imagine they had noidea what Thanos was up to.
(12:54):
They missed all the clues aboutthe infinity stones and then
suddenly, boom, half ofexistence just turned to ash
around them, with no context.
They'd be sitting there like,hey, what happened?
Who did this?
Why couldn't we stop it?
That's what's going to happento players in the original
Shadows Over Bugenhafen if theymissed this vital encounter.
(13:15):
Suddenly Bugenhafen is on fireand thousands of people are
screaming and dying and theyhave no idea why, other than the
GM sprung it on them.
Thankfully, the new edition hasthe investigation very clearly
structured.
There's proper timelines,there's great write-ups of the
(13:36):
npcs with their motivations andthe ways they would act, so it's
spelled out in a crystal clearmanner, and the various threads
of the mystery are presented.
So as a gm, you can actuallyreact the player agency and then
go off and doing all the randomstuff that players do without
completely losing the plot andbeing able to time them back
into the main events.
(13:57):
The festival setting needs aparticular shout out.
It gives excellent colour andtons of roleplay opportunities.
I love how the underlying cultinvestigation maintains the
appropriate tension withoutactually feeling forced, and the
climax of the adventure.
It offers genuine choices and,more importantly, meaningful
(14:20):
consequences.
I should say the originaloffers all of this too, but it's
worth mentioning here in thecontext of this new edition that
it doesn't lose any of thatquality that the original have.
It's also good in that thereare several different ways to
approach the investigation.
As I mentioned there.
There's enough of a skeletonhere that you can hang your
(14:43):
player choices off it.
It doesn't feel like you haveto railroad them towards some
finale.
Speaking of which, somethingwhich I really loved in the
original and which has beenretained here is the apocalypse
section.
The option to actually let thebad guys win and have Boo and
Hafen be genuinely trashed is areally great design choice.
(15:08):
It perfectly captures thatwhole actions have consequences
theme that is so pivotal toWarhammer.
There are many adventures fordifferent RPGs that they kind of
hand wave away any bad endings.
The assumption is the playercharacters will succeed.
This being Warhammer, thisincludes the option of what if
(15:29):
the players don't succeed, andthis was one of my very early
rpg adventures back in the day,so I was kind of spoiled by this
.
I went back to other adventuresand I'm like, oh, why does this
not include an option for whathappens if the players fail?
So this is great.
You have all these otheradventures who pull their
punches at crucial times.
(15:49):
You know they set up thesedramatic stakes and then find
ways to make sure that nothingreally bad happens to the
darling players, not this one.
This adventure commits to itsconvictions If your players mess
up, bogan Huffin is going tohave a bad day, thousands are
going to die and the playershave to live with that, and that
is properly Warhammer fantasyroleplay.
(16:11):
Right there Now.
The book also comes withappendices and they are
genuinely fantastic theBuchenhafen Gazette.
It's comprehensive and actuallyuseful.
It provides enough detail torun numerous adventures in this
town if you want to, creating aliving, breathing settlement
that extends well beyond theimmediate confines of this
(16:34):
adventure.
It actually offers real value,even if you're not running the
campaign, although I do have toquestion who exactly is going to
buy a campaign book just to usethe appendix.
But if you do have this book,you've got a fully realised town
that you could use for years asa base of operations for your
adventurers or just settingadventures in Bugenhafen.
(16:55):
It is that detailed.
There are also numerous newrules in this chapter which you
can apply to your games if youwish.
The NPC creation guidelines inparticular are very sensible and
time-saving.
But the real thing I loved inthe appendices and it's a really
small thing, but I cannotoverstate how much I loved it is
the section on accents of theempire.
(17:17):
It is absolutely brilliantdesign that should be required
reading, not just for everyWarhammer GM, but for every GM.
Instead of prescribing specificreal world accents for various
imperial provinces, it gives youa framework to assign accents
that make sense in your culturalcontext, and this solves that
(17:38):
long-standing gripe that I haveof non-British GMs feeling the
need to mangle various Britishregional accents, usually on
actual plays.
I've had some truly horrificattempts at Cockney and
Yorkshire and Scottish over theyears, and this should put an
end to countless crimes againstpronunciation.
(18:00):
It's absolutely brilliant stuff.
However, we now need to talkabout this book's most
significant flaw in my opinion,which is the Grognard boxes.
Now, I have to be honest herehere.
When I first heard about these,I was genuinely excited.
The idea behind these washaving different approaches for
(18:20):
running the campaign,alternative takes and classic
encounters.
That all sounds fantastic.
I was imagining expandedcontent, different narrative
paths, maybe some deeperexploration of themes that the
original couldn't fit in.
The concept seemed reallyappealing, but what did we
actually get?
Well, that's a different storyaltogether.
(18:41):
These sections are supposed toprovide alternatives for veteran
players who remember theoriginal, but instead of
offering genuinely differentexperiences or expanded content,
these boxes typically assumeveteran players will metagame
and therefore provide theadversarial gotcha moments for
the GM to trip them up.
(19:02):
And it's the language throughoutthese sections that really gets
me.
It frames this GM playerrelationship as fundamentally
antagonistic rather thancollaborative.
There are phrases like confusesuch presumptuous folks with
this that reveal a designphilosophy viewing veteran
players as problems to be solvedrather than as enthusiasts to
(19:22):
be engaged.
It completely misunderstandswhy people return to classic
campaigns.
Veterans don't replay the enemywithin, hoping to be surprised
by random changes, or becausethey want to rush to the end
using their prior knowledge sothey can quote unquote win.
They return because they wantto share the experience with new
(19:43):
players or they want to revisitbeloved content with the
improved mechanics of the newsystem.
The grognar boxes feel likesolutions, desperately searching
for a problem that doesn'tactually exist, and it's such a
missed opportunity.
The concept could have beenbrilliant Imagine alternative
villains or expanded politicalintrigue or different ways to
(20:05):
approach the investigation.
Instead, we get adversarialdesign that treats experienced
players like cheaters who needto be tricked.
There's also another issue Ihave, which I touched on earlier
, which is I believe this fallsshort of being a true director's
cut in some very important ways.
Most notably, it lacks anyoverall campaign summary or
(20:27):
guidance for the five book arc,which suggests to me that the
full vision wasn't actually inplace when they wrote this
volume.
And this is such an importantthing.
If you're going to invest in acampaign that goes over five
books and presumably takes acouple of years to run, you, as
a GM, want to know what's goingon beforehand, especially if
(20:49):
you're going to be changingthings.
This is doubly important if thepeople writing the campaign
don't actually know wherethey're heading with it, because
they can offer all sorts ofsupposed changes that you could
drop in, but if they haven'tdecided how this is going to end
, what's going to happen if youmake the changes?
(21:09):
When you're running this brandnew book you've got, and in two
years time the final book'sreleased and you find out that
none of this pays off?
There's one example in this bookthat is particularly
fascinating.
It introduces a demon calledthe Changeling and suggests that
you can use this instead of theprimary antagonist in the book.
(21:30):
Now, some advice is offered togive you guidance on how to use
this character, but there iszero guidance given as to how
making this change is going toimpact the broader campaign.
Now I'll keep this brief andspoiler free, or as spoiler free
as I can, but it turns out inthe final chapter of the
campaign that the antagonistthat you replace with the
(21:53):
Changeling is actually one ofthe key players in the plot.
If you've replaced thisantagonist with the Changeling
without spoiling things, it isvery, very clear that the
original promise from Enemy inShadows is not realised in the
final chapter.
Whatever vision that they hadfor that clearly fell by the
(22:14):
wayside during campaigndevelopment.
It's particularly frustratingbecause things like this are
missed opportunities forgenuinely different campaign
experiences.
So where does this leave us?
Enemy in Shadows succeeds whereit matters most it presents the
classic enemy within theexperience in a more organised,
(22:35):
mechanically sound package thataddresses many of the original's
flaws whilst preserving itsessential character and the
things that made it great.
The improved organisation alonemakes this version worth
purchasing if you're planning torun the campaign.
The appendices provide somegenuine value, especially the
guide to the Town and, in mycase, the Empire Accents
(22:57):
Guidelines, but the book'sinsistence on treating veteran
players, who presumably are theprimary audience, as adversaries
rather than collaborators andfans really leaves a sour taste
in the mouth.
Likewise, the incompleteDirector's Cut vision and those
dangling plot threads suggest acampaign that wasn't fully
(23:19):
thought through during thedevelopment stage.
However, despite these flaws,this is an excellent reworking
of one of RPG's greatestadventures.
For veterans like myself, it'sa beautiful functional update
that improves the playexperience, even though it
occasionally talks down to me.
The Enemy Within remains amasterpiece of a campaign design
(23:43):
, and Enemy in Shadows provesthat some classics genuinely
deserve the reputation.
My advice would be if you're afan of Warhammer, buy it.
Ignore the grognald boxes andenjoy the ride.
I'm going to give it 4 out of 5stars, and that was our deep
(24:15):
dive into Enemy in Shadows.
We hope you enjoyed it.
If you've run this campaign,either in the original or the
new version, we'd love to hearyour thoughts.
Either drop us a line on emailat roletosavepod, at gmailcom,
or on social media.
We'd be delighted to hear fromyou.
(24:35):
We're uh well, I was gonna saymonthly, because I'm so used to
saying that we're not a monthlypodcast by any stretch of the
imagination.
We're an occasional podcast onrpg history.
We've got a back catalogue ofover 60 episodes dealing with
history, reviews, roundtables,author interviews, even some
actual plays.
(24:56):
So if you fancy checking out,please do, and if you don't mind
, please leave us a review.
We'd love to see five stars,because that helps us get more
visibility.
Until then, we will see you inthe next episode and keep those
dice rolling and remember in thegrim darkness of the old world
there are no heroes, onlysurvivals.
Welcome to Roll2Save, the RPG history podcast,
warhammer Fantasy Roleplay.
Hello and welcome to anotherepisode of Roll to Save.
(00:30):
I'm your host, ian, and todaywe're reviewing something that's
very close to my heart Enemy inShadows.
The fourth edition director'scut of the legendary Enemy
Within campaign for WarhammerFantasy Roleplay the legendary
Enemy Within campaign forWarhammer fantasy role-playing.
Now I need to start with aconfession here.
(00:50):
This isn't just any review.
For me, this campaign well, thiscampaign basically shaped who I
am as a player in the gamesmaster.
Picture this.
It's 1988, I'm 12 years old andI convinced I know everything
about running games and I'mattempting to run the enemy
within for my friends, of course.
Back then I was working withwhat can only be described as
(01:14):
the organizational nightmarethat was the original Shadows
Over Bugenhafen Great adventure,but I spent half my time
frantically flipping throughpages mid-session, desperately
hunting for NPC stats or tryingto figure out what was supposed
to happen next.
Interestingly, though, in the80s that was just an accepted
(01:35):
fact.
Modules were usually brilliantbut utterly chaotic, and that's
just how things went.
So here we are, 30 plus yearslater, and Cubular 7 has given
us the director's cut of theanimation Shadows 30 years of
hindsight.
The mechanical improvements of4th edition Warhammer and the
(01:56):
promise of fixing all thoseorganisational issues that
plagued the original.
Oh, and a promise to wrap upthe campaign properly and make
the whole thing fit togethercoherently.
A little bit of an aside herefor those of you who aren't
overly familiar with the EnemyWithin campaign the original
(02:16):
edition had six chapters, but itkind of petered off after the
fourth chapter, mainly becauseGames Workshop realised that
they made more money sellingsmall plastic models than they
did in writing.
Long wiki books, disconnectedfrom what had gone before and
also left a ton of plot threadsdangling, things that were never
(02:46):
resolved, that seemed to beimportant elsewhere in the
campaign.
So big expectations for the newversion of the campaign.
Enemy in Shadows was the firstchapter written for the new
Enemy Within that would spanfive chapters and the promise
was that this definitivedirector's cut would address a
(03:08):
lot of the shortcomings of theoriginal.
So the big question is lookingat NME in shadows, does it
deliver, or are we just lookingat nostalgia wrapped up in
better packaging?
Let's get into it First.
(03:31):
Let's talk about what we'reactually getting here.
Enemy in Shadows is a lovelyhardback book containing the
first two adventures from theoriginal Enemy Within campaign,
mistaken Identity and ShadowsOver Buggenhaven, completely
updated for 4th edition.
Rules classic one.
(03:56):
The characters get involved ina plot where they're mistaken
for someone else, or rather oneof the number is mistaken for
someone else, and this dragsthem into a whole web of
conspiracy and intrigue that'sgoing to define the entire five
book campaign.
They start off coaching in thejourney through to the capital
city of altdorf, then theysettle into the trading down of
bugenhafen.
Here they get embroiled in afantastic investigation that is
(04:18):
much more Call of Cthulhu thanWarhammer, and they end up
investigating corruption at thehighest levels of society.
The production values here areabsolutely gorgeous.
The art throughout the bookperfectly captures that grim,
dark tone that makes Warhammerso special.
And if you spring for thecollector's edition, oh my
(04:42):
goodness, it's beautiful.
It also comes with handoutsthat genuinely enhance play
rather than just seeming to bepretty decorations.
But let's dig into the meat ofit.
The opening chapter, wanted BoldAdventurers, covers the classic
setup of a coach journey and aroadside encounter.
(05:03):
It gives people someinteresting NPCs to interact
with in the book.
It clearly details who theseguys are, what their motivations
are and some personality quirksto help the GM bring them to
life.
They feel like genuineencounters rather than just time
wasters that you'd put in topad out a session.
(05:23):
This is also where we begin tosee the grognard boxes, special
sections intended for veteranplayers.
We'll talk more about theselater on and I think in every
review that I do of this, I'llprobably end up bringing them up
, but I find them to be a littlebit problematic.
Anyway, come to them later.
(05:44):
The next chapter sees the firstcombat of the campaign, which
helps as a gentle introductionto Warhammer's sometimes crunchy
approach to combat, but it alsoreally helps establish the
atmosphere of the campaignWithout spoiling anything.
This really begins to set upthe tones of paranoia and
(06:04):
suspicion that should be eatingat your players, and it also
introduces the aspect of mutantsin the empire how they're
treated, how they're consideredand what actions they may take.
How they're treated, howthey're considered and what
actions they may take.
The next section sees theplayers arrive in the imperial
capital of Altdorf, and I reallylike how they present this.
It's the same as they did inthe original.
(06:26):
It gives them enoughinformation about the capital to
bring it to life, without beingexhaustive and having locations
where the players can justwander off here, there and
everywhere, and I think Cubicle7 would rather you bought their
book on Altdorf than publish itin here.
But the urban encounters arereally well structured.
It really sets up that feelingof a crowded, bustling
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metropolis.
And this is where we get theintroduction to the bounty
hunter subplot from MistakenIdentity and it's handled with
appropriate menace.
But one of my favorite scenesin the whole book is when the
purple hand cultists try to makecontact with the party and one
of the characters who do youthink is someone else.
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If you picture this, thecultists approach with secret
signs and coded phrasesexpecting recognition and your
player characters just stareblankly at them or in complete
confusion.
Meanwhile the cultists areequally baffled because their
contact isn't responding to therecognition signals.
It's a brilliant moment ofmutual bewilderment.
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It really drives home the wholemistaken identity premise.
Bewilderment.
It really drives home the wholemistaken identity premise.
Both sides know something'swrong but neither understands
what, and all the while thebounty hunter subplot is weaving
through everything, adding alittle layer of paranoia.
But here's where I start to haveconcerns about the broader
campaign and I will say this I'mwriting this from hindsight in
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that I have read all thechapters of the new Enemy Within
campaign.
But even when I first just readEnemy in Shadows I thought, oh,
hopefully this will pay offlater on.
There's a scene where thecharacters glimpse the Emperor
and there's a big point madethat this is a really important
scene.
You need to throw it in herebecause this will become really
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important in future adventures.
Except it is never referencedagain in any of the adventures
that come along, so it feelsthat the campaign's writing
checks that it can't cash.
It also feeds my belief thatthis wasn't actually properly
thought out when it was firstmade, but we'll come on to more
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of that later on the journey toBugenhafen that they go through.
It works well.
It builds up the atmosphere ofwhat the empire is like, it lets
the characters see someday-to-day life and it also
builds some tension as well.
The town of Weisbruck it getscompetent treatment as a
stopping point and while itfeels more functional than
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memorable at first glance, it'sactually very clever world
building.
As I mentioned, I've gonethrough the other parts of the
enemy within campaign andWeissbrück gets revisited in
Death in the Rite.
So establishing it here as afamiliar location for the PCs is
much smarter because it meansthat it doesn't just appear at
some random dot on the map lateron.
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Little touches like this reallyhelp bring the campaign alive
and make the world feel likeit's being lived in.
So once we've got through allof that, we get to the main meat
of Enemy in Shadows, which waswhat was formerly known as
Shadows over Bugenhafen.
I'm not going to spoil the plothere.
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I'll be as spoiler free aspossible, because it's a really
nice adventure, really wellstructured investigation, and
people will still want to playit.
But this is also where thedirector's cut really shows its
worth compared to, as Imentioned before, the
organisational mess that was theoriginal.
Just to drive home here howmuch of an improvement this new
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edition is, let me tell youabout how much of a mess the
original was.
I wrote a blog post about thisa few years ago after rereading
that book as an adult, and itreally made me realize just how
badly organized it was, and itkind of baffled me how my 12
year old self actually managedto run this.
(10:24):
So most adventures you'd expectto be laid out logically right,
and for Shadows Over Buggenhafenfor those of you who've played
it before I'd expect it to besomething like the introduction,
a guide to the city, a timeline, the adventure details, the
aftermath and any appendices.
Pretty simple, prettystraightforward, and instead
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what you got was something muchmore like the introduction, a
rough timeline, the start of thecity guide, the start of the
adventure.
Then we cut to the story so far.
Then we get the continuation ofthe adventure.
Then cut to the story so far,then we get the continuation of
the adventure, then we get apullout section with more city
guide and some NPC stats, thenwe get a different timeline,
then we get a section on commonknowledge, then we get some more
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adventure, then we get keylocations, then we got a
separate guide to the temples inthe city, then we get more
adventure, then we finally getthe aftermath.
It was exhausting to use.
Here's a perfect example of howbad it was.
So, again, without spoiling it,there's this crucial encounter
in the middle of the adventure,kind of beginning of the second
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act, where the powers that beapproach the characters and
offer some assurance.
The usual hey, everything'sfine, nothing to see here.
Routine.
It's a pivotal moment and itgives the players a key contact
in the adventure who becomesinstrumental in the climax,
essential to the plot.
So where would you look forthis, you'd think the event
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section, right?
Nope, well, maybe it's the npcsection, because this is a key
character.
Nope, and by the way, thatsection only featured three of
the three main NPCs.
The rest were sort of scatteredthroughout the book like
breadcrumbs.
Where you actually found thisreally crucial encounter was in
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the key city location section.
And get this.
The timeline says that thisevent happens in the course of
their inquiries, implying it's areally important story beat.
But as it's written in the keylocations, it only triggers if
the players do one very specificthing.
If they don't, well, good luckin you running the climax,
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unless you can find some otherway to finagle this guy in,
because without meeting this NPC, the players are really going
to struggle to get near thefinale.
Imagine if the Avengers inInfinity War and apologies if
you've never seen this film andhave no idea what I'm talking
about but imagine they had noidea what Thanos was up to.
(12:54):
They missed all the clues aboutthe infinity stones and then
suddenly, boom, half ofexistence just turned to ash
around them, with no context.
They'd be sitting there like,hey, what happened?
Who did this?
Why couldn't we stop it?
That's what's going to happento players in the original
Shadows Over Bugenhafen if theymissed this vital encounter.
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Suddenly Bugenhafen is on fireand thousands of people are
screaming and dying and theyhave no idea why, other than the
GM sprung it on them.
Thankfully, the new edition hasthe investigation very clearly
structured.
There's proper timelines,there's great write-ups of the
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npcs with their motivations andthe ways they would act, so it's
spelled out in a crystal clearmanner, and the various threads
of the mystery are presented.
So as a gm, you can actuallyreact the player agency and then
go off and doing all the randomstuff that players do without
completely losing the plot andbeing able to time them back
into the main events.
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The festival setting needs aparticular shout out.
It gives excellent colour andtons of roleplay opportunities.
I love how the underlying cultinvestigation maintains the
appropriate tension withoutactually feeling forced, and the
climax of the adventure.
It offers genuine choices and,more importantly, meaningful
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consequences.
I should say the originaloffers all of this too, but it's
worth mentioning here in thecontext of this new edition that
it doesn't lose any of thatquality that the original have.
It's also good in that thereare several different ways to
approach the investigation.
As I mentioned there.
There's enough of a skeletonhere that you can hang your
(14:43):
player choices off it.
It doesn't feel like you haveto railroad them towards some
finale.
Speaking of which, somethingwhich I really loved in the
original and which has beenretained here is the apocalypse
section.
The option to actually let thebad guys win and have Boo and
Hafen be genuinely trashed is areally great design choice.
(15:08):
It perfectly captures thatwhole actions have consequences
theme that is so pivotal toWarhammer.
There are many adventures fordifferent RPGs that they kind of
hand wave away any bad endings.
The assumption is the playercharacters will succeed.
This being Warhammer, thisincludes the option of what if
(15:29):
the players don't succeed, andthis was one of my very early
rpg adventures back in the day,so I was kind of spoiled by this
.
I went back to other adventuresand I'm like, oh, why does this
not include an option for whathappens if the players fail?
So this is great.
You have all these otheradventures who pull their
punches at crucial times.
(15:49):
You know they set up thesedramatic stakes and then find
ways to make sure that nothingreally bad happens to the
darling players, not this one.
This adventure commits to itsconvictions If your players mess
up, bogan Huffin is going tohave a bad day, thousands are
going to die and the playershave to live with that, and that
is properly Warhammer fantasyroleplay.
(16:11):
Right there Now.
The book also comes withappendices and they are
genuinely fantastic theBuchenhafen Gazette.
It's comprehensive and actuallyuseful.
It provides enough detail torun numerous adventures in this
town if you want to, creating aliving, breathing settlement
that extends well beyond theimmediate confines of this
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adventure.
It actually offers real value,even if you're not running the
campaign, although I do have toquestion who exactly is going to
buy a campaign book just to usethe appendix.
But if you do have this book,you've got a fully realised town
that you could use for years asa base of operations for your
adventurers or just settingadventures in Bugenhafen.
(16:55):
It is that detailed.
There are also numerous newrules in this chapter which you
can apply to your games if youwish.
The NPC creation guidelines inparticular are very sensible and
time-saving.
But the real thing I loved inthe appendices and it's a really
small thing, but I cannotoverstate how much I loved it is
the section on accents of theempire.
(17:17):
It is absolutely brilliantdesign that should be required
reading, not just for everyWarhammer GM, but for every GM.
Instead of prescribing specificreal world accents for various
imperial provinces, it gives youa framework to assign accents
that make sense in your culturalcontext, and this solves that
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long-standing gripe that I haveof non-British GMs feeling the
need to mangle various Britishregional accents, usually on
actual plays.
I've had some truly horrificattempts at Cockney and
Yorkshire and Scottish over theyears, and this should put an
end to countless crimes againstpronunciation.
(18:00):
It's absolutely brilliant stuff.
However, we now need to talkabout this book's most
significant flaw in my opinion,which is the Grognard boxes.
Now, I have to be honest herehere.
When I first heard about these,I was genuinely excited.
The idea behind these washaving different approaches for
(18:20):
running the campaign,alternative takes and classic
encounters.
That all sounds fantastic.
I was imagining expandedcontent, different narrative
paths, maybe some deeperexploration of themes that the
original couldn't fit in.
The concept seemed reallyappealing, but what did we
actually get?
Well, that's a different storyaltogether.
(18:41):
These sections are supposed toprovide alternatives for veteran
players who remember theoriginal, but instead of
offering genuinely differentexperiences or expanded content,
these boxes typically assumeveteran players will metagame
and therefore provide theadversarial gotcha moments for
the GM to trip them up.
(19:02):
And it's the language throughoutthese sections that really gets
me.
It frames this GM playerrelationship as fundamentally
antagonistic rather thancollaborative.
There are phrases like confusesuch presumptuous folks with
this that reveal a designphilosophy viewing veteran
players as problems to be solvedrather than as enthusiasts to
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be engaged.
It completely misunderstandswhy people return to classic
campaigns.
Veterans don't replay the enemywithin, hoping to be surprised
by random changes, or becausethey want to rush to the end
using their prior knowledge sothey can quote unquote win.
They return because they wantto share the experience with new
(19:43):
players or they want to revisitbeloved content with the
improved mechanics of the newsystem.
The grognar boxes feel likesolutions, desperately searching
for a problem that doesn'tactually exist, and it's such a
missed opportunity.
The concept could have beenbrilliant Imagine alternative
villains or expanded politicalintrigue or different ways to
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approach the investigation.
Instead, we get adversarialdesign that treats experienced
players like cheaters who needto be tricked.
There's also another issue Ihave, which I touched on earlier
, which is I believe this fallsshort of being a true director's
cut in some very important ways.
Most notably, it lacks anyoverall campaign summary or
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guidance for the five book arc,which suggests to me that the
full vision wasn't actually inplace when they wrote this
volume.
And this is such an importantthing.
If you're going to invest in acampaign that goes over five
books and presumably takes acouple of years to run, you, as
a GM, want to know what's goingon beforehand, especially if
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you're going to be changingthings.
This is doubly important if thepeople writing the campaign
don't actually know wherethey're heading with it, because
they can offer all sorts ofsupposed changes that you could
drop in, but if they haven'tdecided how this is going to end
, what's going to happen if youmake the changes?
(21:09):
When you're running this brandnew book you've got, and in two
years time the final book'sreleased and you find out that
none of this pays off?
There's one example in this bookthat is particularly
fascinating.
It introduces a demon calledthe Changeling and suggests that
you can use this instead of theprimary antagonist in the book.
(21:30):
Now, some advice is offered togive you guidance on how to use
this character, but there iszero guidance given as to how
making this change is going toimpact the broader campaign.
Now I'll keep this brief andspoiler free, or as spoiler free
as I can, but it turns out inthe final chapter of the
campaign that the antagonistthat you replace with the
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Changeling is actually one ofthe key players in the plot.
If you've replaced thisantagonist with the Changeling
without spoiling things, it isvery, very clear that the
original promise from Enemy inShadows is not realised in the
final chapter.
Whatever vision that they hadfor that clearly fell by the
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wayside during campaigndevelopment.
It's particularly frustratingbecause things like this are
missed opportunities forgenuinely different campaign
experiences.
So where does this leave us?
Enemy in Shadows succeeds whereit matters most it presents the
classic enemy within theexperience in a more organised,
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mechanically sound package thataddresses many of the original's
flaws whilst preserving itsessential character and the
things that made it great.
The improved organisation alonemakes this version worth
purchasing if you're planning torun the campaign.
The appendices provide somegenuine value, especially the
guide to the Town and, in mycase, the Empire Accents
(22:57):
Guidelines, but the book'sinsistence on treating veteran
players, who presumably are theprimary audience, as adversaries
rather than collaborators andfans really leaves a sour taste
in the mouth.
Likewise, the incompleteDirector's Cut vision and those
dangling plot threads suggest acampaign that wasn't fully
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thought through during thedevelopment stage.
However, despite these flaws,this is an excellent reworking
of one of RPG's greatestadventures.
For veterans like myself, it'sa beautiful functional update
that improves the playexperience, even though it
occasionally talks down to me.
The Enemy Within remains amasterpiece of a campaign design
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, and Enemy in Shadows provesthat some classics genuinely
deserve the reputation.
My advice would be if you're afan of Warhammer, buy it.
Ignore the grognald boxes andenjoy the ride.
I'm going to give it 4 out of 5stars, and that was our deep
(24:15):
dive into Enemy in Shadows.
We hope you enjoyed it.
If you've run this campaign,either in the original or the
new version, we'd love to hearyour thoughts.
Either drop us a line on emailat roletosavepod, at gmailcom,
or on social media.
We'd be delighted to hear fromyou.
(24:35):
We're uh well, I was gonna saymonthly, because I'm so used to
saying that we're not a monthlypodcast by any stretch of the
imagination.
We're an occasional podcast onrpg history.
We've got a back catalogue ofover 60 episodes dealing with
history, reviews, roundtables,author interviews, even some
actual plays.
(24:56):
So if you fancy checking out,please do, and if you don't mind
, please leave us a review.
We'd love to see five stars,because that helps us get more
visibility.
Until then, we will see you inthe next episode and keep those
dice rolling and remember in thegrim darkness of the old world
there are no heroes, onlysurvivals.
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