The Dying of the Light is an adventure for Warhammer Fantasy Role-Play (first edition), originally published by Hogshead Publishing. I’ve owned my copy for twenty or so years and finally led a party through it this year. The catch? I converted it to Dungeons & Dragons fifth edition and ran it for a high-level party. That was tough and enlightening.

I’ve owned my WFRP books for more years than I haven’t and never played through the adventure from cover to cover. WFRP was a great game, but it’s mechanically dated and cumbersome when compared to newer games like D&D 5e and Pathfinder. (Heresy!) A group of D&D players asked me to run a game for them, so I figured I’d bang a square peg into a round hole and mash the two together.

The Basics

The first task was to convert checks into DCs. This I mostly did on the fly. WFRP skills were converted in the same way — find the D&D equivalent of a skill and you’re good to go.

NPCs and monsters were pulled from the Monster Manual or the Dungeon Master’s Guide, as appropriate. For the skaven I used wererats, while the fimir I replaced with monsters I had miniatures of. Whatever happened to the fimir beyond WFRP 1st ed anyway? I also created a bunch of new creatures to fill out the ranks.

The Problem

The tough part of this little undertaking was using the rules for a “hopeful fantasy game” like D&D to run a game set in the grim Old World. I added diabolical monsters to coerce the PCs, and I’d suggest using the rules for sanity and madness from the Dungeon Master’s Guide.

Still, D&D characters are far more powerful than an ex-rat catcher from the sewers of Nuln could ever hope to be, so plan accordingly. The Dying of the Light is probably best run for characters around 3rd level.

Did You Know: Chris Pramas, who wrote The Place of Testing, is the founder and president of Green Ronin Publishing.

The Secret Sauce

We’re GMs, we improvise. Nothing in The Dying of the Light is so sacred that it can’t change to fit a different system, your players, or your maniacal ambitions. Let Moorslieb swallow the sun and plunge the world into darkness — for Khorne!

Rodney Sloan
Rising Phoenix Games

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