Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay

[Killer Shrike]

Picked up the boxed set last night, read the main rulebook.

Official site (http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_minisite.asp?eidm=93&enmi=Warhammer%20Fantasy%20Roleplay)

It's.....different. Not sure yet if that's a good or bad thing. At first blush it seems gimmicky.

[lemming]

Whoa. Looks quite a bit different from the old version. I just scanned it, possibly made to mesh better with the MMO?

[Killer Shrike]

I don't think so. It's definitely oriented towards F2F play. The setting is intact and they kept the career concept and some other "core" concepts. You still have Troll Slayers and odd careers such as Barber-Surgeons and Commoners. The venerable career advancement concept is still there.


The mechanics are very different however. The underpinnings seem very solid, but there are so many effects I haven't really wrapped my head around its overall playability.

Basically its a collection of subsystems unified by a couple of mechanics; a funky die pool and the "stance" concept which allows a character to convert a certain number of a basic die into a more flavored stance die; the aggressive dice are high risk high reward and the conservative dice are low risk low reward; aside from the dice shtick, some of the effects vary based on stance.

Overall, there is quite a bit of complexity hiding behind good production values and props. Bottom line, most games I can grok the permutations of logically, but I think this is a game that has to be played to really analyze.

[Killer Shrike]

Sat down and made a character tonight, an Apprentice Wizard of the Celestial Order.

Took a couple of hours, much longer than I expected.

It certainly wasn't due to complexity level. And the resulting character was pretty anemic (I expected no less from a starting Warhammer character however), so it wasn't due to the depth of abilities.

The main cause was that I had to flip around in the 40 odd page book on arcane magic to get all the nuances on extra stuff wizards get or need or have to take. And even so, I'm not a 100% clear on a couple of things. For instance, I'm assuming from earlier WH experiences that I can take a Rank 2 spell even on a starting character, it will just be harder to cast, but I couldn't seem to find anything describing the differentiation between spell ranks.

Also, because all the character abilities are only described on talent and action cards, there was a lot of sorting cards out, pulling those that seemed applicable, reading them all, and finally picking a few. This was a big time-waster. And in true WH fashion, each ability usually boiled down to a sentence or three at most.

Because the cards are the only source of the abilities, I guess if Joe loses the Apprentice Wizard card or Bob gets pizza all over the ballistics action cards he's hoarding you're just SOL.


So anyway, the resulting character seemed ok. Better than my original WH 1e Apprentice Wizard Ambrosious, circa 1988. Although, true story, I used my one lame Light spell to escape from prison by casting it on individual bricks in the wall. The Light effect lasted a while, but it consumed the item it was cast on. I believe that got errata'd at some point; apparently it wasn't meant to be a cantrip level DISINTEGRATE ;)

And the 3e version seems to be on par with or maybe a little weaker than a 2e version I wrote up for conversion testing.

But I digress.

Though my new Wizard, Ambrosious III., seems more or as capable than his predecessors in previous editions, he seems really squishy. I have serious doubts that he'd survive a real play session unless A) the GM was going easy B) I could manipulate one or more other players into being my shield grogs, or C) I played him as a total chicken and avoided all confrontation. Or some combination thereof. I'm an opportunist, I'll take what I can get.

Anyway, I put together some dice pools as best as I could grok the rules, and rolled for a few effects. My initial thoughts on the matter are, for all the fussiness about how many of which die type to roll and the total number of dice involved, the end result (at least for my starting out character) was pretty anticlimactic. Several minutes of going over cards and stats figuring out one of those dies, three of these, two of those, etc...and it all culminates in a success and maybe a boon and maybe a bane, and then another hunt thru relevant cards and profile to figure out what a boon or a bane does for me / to me.



However, I do see this, the game could appeal more to casual players who play the occasional RPG because their friends do. Girlfriends and hangerson types. It's very tactile; I find it obnoxious to have to go over all the cards myself, but on the up side for non-mechanics everything a player needs to know about their characters is represented on the cards associated with it - so not a lot of rule reading required up front, just read the card when necessary during play.


Anyway, I'll keep dinking around with it on the side, until I get tired of it.

[lemming]

Thanks for the review. Probably something I would of picked up to play around with in the past. Not so much now.

[Killer Shrike]

I made a Soldier character, and it went a lot smoother. He turned into a stat monkey and is very narrowly focused, but I think he could survive long enough to broaden out a bit. There were a lot fewer things to consider, and it took less than 30 minutes to create the character.

Starting characters don't have much differentiation. For instance, Roadwardens and Soldiers are pretty darn similar and get similar advances, have the same "talent" sockets of Reputation x1 and Tactics x1, and the same stances. Soldiers have Ballistic Skill as a career skill and Roadwardens don't but other than that they are equally capable at combat.

Presumably, as characters get into a second career they start to become more distinctive (or at least that's how it worked in past editions of WHFRPG).

Anyway, I think with a little practice I could start spinning out non-spell caster characters in under 10 minutes as they have fewer options / complexity to worry about and at a certain point are fairly cookie cutter.


On the otherhand, and I had forgotten about this aspect of WHFRPG, as a GM building up a higher level NPC designed like a PC would be very time consuming due to needing to advance them thru enough careers to get them to where they need to be for the plot. By default the game uses an abstracted profile for bad guys, but I've never been a fan of having "PC's" defined one way and everything else defined another way. It's very illogical and bugs me quite a bit.


And of course, as I do this, I'm thinking "how would I convert this to the HERO System?". Unfortunately the gimmicky dice pool mechanic is basically the game and converting mechanics is a bad idea. The concepts themselves, I would just go with the 2e equivalent. I mean, sure, I could assign some mechanic to cover "fortune" dice and what not, but it would lose its relevance if divorced from the dice pool mechanic it drives.

[Killer Shrike]

A pretty solid review is up on rpg.net:

rpg.net review (http://www.rpg.net/reviews/archive/14/14616.phtml)

[Broadsword]

I used to play the older Warhammer Fantasy and liked it a lot. It gains a lot of flavor with all the career changes you can gain. A very experienced character can be a total monster.

[Zane_Marlowe]

I was always a big fan of the WHFRP world, but I never liked past systems. This could be really interesting, but I am wincing a bit at the pricetag. 100 schmuckers! Yowch!

[Killer Shrike]

I was always a big fan of the WHFRP world, but I never liked past systems. This could be really interesting, but I am wincing a bit at the pricetag. 100 schmuckers! Yowch!

If you've got a group to play it with, it's probably worth the price tag. It does have a LOT of stuff in the box.

Of course, I buy things like the Worlds Largest Dungeon and Ptolus...and WFR 3e for that matter...as novelty items even though I don't necessarily really intend to play them, so I'm not a great canary in that particular coal mine.

[Michael Hopcroft]

The Warhammer world always struck me as far darker than it needed to be. It's like the world will inevitably succumb to Chaos and the best PCs can do -- if they can do even that -- is hold in the water by plugging fingers into the dike. How it could survivie forty thousand more tears is beyond me.

[Kristopher]

The Warhammer world always struck me as far darker than it needed to be. It's like the world will inevitably succumb to Chaos and the best PCs can do -- if they can do even that -- is hold in the water by plugging fingers into the dike. How it could survivie forty thousand more tears is beyond me.

There's a strain of fantasy/science fiction that's enamoured with the hopeless.

[Killer Shrike]

The Warhammer world always struck me as far darker than it needed to be. It's like the world will inevitably succumb to Chaos and the best PCs can do -- if they can do even that -- is hold in the water by plugging fingers into the dike. How it could survivie forty thousand more tears is beyond me.

The gritter black humor of Warhammer Fantasy was actually part of the appeal for some. Kind of in the same way that Cthulu has its charms. When the deck is stacked against you, even minor success feel "great", and real significant success are epic. For instance my 1e Ratcatcher escaping by the skin of his teeth from being hung by an angry mob as a Chaos sympathizer / mutant due to a skin rash he developed crawling around in the sewers as being more thrilling and ultimately memorable than any number of slain dragons in old skool D&D and AD&D. The complete incompetence and lack of options available to the character and the meanness of the system made the successful evasion of certain death via wit, circumstance, and luck far more rewarding.

[Zane_Marlowe]

I tend to like the WH fantasy setting because of the way it blends fantasy tropes with historical feel, and the occasional bit of humor as well.

With respect to the darkness of the setting, I'll second Shrike's point about Cthulhu-esque adventuring, but there are other ways to go. One is to disregard the darkness of it and just play it as straight fantasy with these large challenges. Yes, Chaos is powerful, insidious, and so on, but whether they win ultimately or not is up to the GM and the players. Shrike's right that there would be no heroism if everything in the world started well, but how it ends up has more to do with whether or not we think it's dark (and thus, if you don't like dark settings, unpalettable). Think about Tolkien's work for a moment. It's infused with a kind of sadness about the passing away of beautiful things, mortality, corruption of good, and so on, but his work isn't thought so dark because of the goodness of its central characters and the way in which that influences others and leads to brighter outcomes than "Chaos overruns everything."

Like every other game, Warhammer is what you make it.

[BlackSword]

rpg.net has an interview (http://www.rpg.net/columns/interviews/interviews20.phtml) with the designer of the third edition. One of his comments about the setting I think kind of explains the appeal:

Prior to WFRP, I had been used to playing RPGs where your characters are heroes willing to risk life and limb to rescue the princess or gain treasure. WFRP turned that on its head and offered a really dark place filled with dark powers pursuing their dark plans. Sometimes characters get caught up in the world around them and have to react or get crushed by the enigmatic wheels of Chaos.

It was such a ... visceral ... setting to GM for my players. It sort of opened up my eyes to what GM’ing could be about – actions could have very dire consequences. The good guys don’t always win. Sometimes the Big Bad really is that powerful and can’t be stopped, only contained or lessened.

[Killer Shrike]

rpg.net has an interview (http://www.rpg.net/columns/interviews/interviews20.phtml) with the designer of the third edition. One of his comments about the setting I think kind of explains the appeal:

Good stuff. Yeah, the familiarity with the old material does shine thru in 3e...in fact that was one of my initial thoughts as a read through it -- Hey! I remember that from 1e! types of thoughts. Stuff that went under the radar in 2e bubble back up in places, and it felt very familiar.

The changes really are mechanical in nature.

I've about half convinced myself to scare up a group and try running a game w/ 3e. There are some things I don't like off hand, but it is compelling nonetheless.

[Blue]

Probably explained somewhere, but I thought I'd just go ahead and ask. Is the recent book Rogue Tader part of the revised WHFRP system? Or was it built on the previous version? Or possibly even none of the above?

[Dr. Confoundo]

Probably explained somewhere, but I thought I'd just go ahead and ask. Is the recent book Rogue Tader part of the revised WHFRP system? Or was it built on the previous version? Or possibly even none of the above?

It's a followup on Dark Heresy, which was the first in the Warhammer 40,000 sci-fi RPG line. Where Dark Heresy focused on Imperial Inquistors on their never-ending quest to purge the unclean, Rogue Trader focuses on the scummy underbelly of criminals and smugglers the fly under the Imperium's radar.

[Killer Shrike]

Probably explained somewhere, but I thought I'd just go ahead and ask. Is the recent book Rogue Tader part of the revised WHFRP system? Or was it built on the previous version? Or possibly even none of the above?

It's built on the Dark Heresy system, which is very similar to the WHFRP 2e rules.

[Kristopher]

I tend to like the WH fantasy setting because of the way it blends fantasy tropes with historical feel, and the occasional bit of humor as well.

With respect to the darkness of the setting, I'll second Shrike's point about Cthulhu-esque adventuring, but there are other ways to go. One is to disregard the darkness of it and just play it as straight fantasy with these large challenges. Yes, Chaos is powerful, insidious, and so on, but whether they win ultimately or not is up to the GM and the players. Shrike's right that there would be no heroism if everything in the world started well, but how it ends up has more to do with whether or not we think it's dark (and thus, if you don't like dark settings, unpalettable). Think about Tolkien's work for a moment. It's infused with a kind of sadness about the passing away of beautiful things, mortality, corruption of good, and so on, but his work isn't thought so dark because of the goodness of its central characters and the way in which that influences others and leads to brighter outcomes than "Chaos overruns everything."

Like every other game, Warhammer is what you make it.

The Warhammer (or Moorcock) version of the Rings trilogy is that by the end of the third book, the characters are all turned, killed, and/or lose everything. At best, they manage to re-contain Sauron, and more likely, Frodo is turned completely and Sauron gets the ring back. Maybe Frodo merges with Sauron in Arthas / Lich King style.

[Yoshi Tonic]

The Warhammer world always struck me as far darker than it needed to be. It's like the world will inevitably succumb to Chaos and the best PCs can do -- if they can do even that -- is hold in the water by plugging fingers into the dike. How it could survivie forty thousand more tears is beyond me.

The Warhammer Fantasy and Warhammer 40k settings aren't connected at all anymore. Once upon a time they tried to make 40k the future of Fantasy, or that the Old World was a planet in the 40k setting isolated by a Warp Storm, but now they are two completely separate settings that just share a similar name and a few themes.

[Zane_Marlowe]

Well, you can always go darker than Tolkien because the good guys DO win in the end, even if they don't win without losing something important. You're right that the Warhammer version of Tolkien is not going to see Morgoth or Sauron ever dealt with in final terms. That said, my earlier point was that if you thought Warhammer was dark, you could go the other way and interpret Warhammer through brighter lenses.

[Michael Hopcroft]

Well, you can always go darker than Tolkien because the good guys DO win in the end, even if they don't win without losing something important. You're right that the Warhammer version of Tolkien is not going to see Morgoth or Sauron ever dealt with in final terms. That said, my earlier point was that if you thought Warhammer was dark, you could go the other way and interpret Warhammer through brighter lenses.

The cheerful, happy face of the end of the world?

Is it jut me, or does an insidious Chaos force seem too organized? When I see Chaos, I expect to see the Heath Ledger Joker: elementarily destructive yet completely unpredictable, with astounding whims and constant surprises. The Joker was chaos wrapped in flesh in the movie, and I expect chaos to be chaotic. But I haven't read much Moorcock (the clear inspiration for much of the Warhammer world) so I'm not sure if his Chaos works differently.

[Markdoc]

The cheerful, happy face of the end of the world?

Is it jut me, or does an insidious Chaos force seem too organized? When I see Chaos, I expect to see the Heath Ledger Joker: elementarily destructive yet completely unpredictable, with astounding whims and constant surprises. The Joker was chaos wrapped in flesh in the movie, and I expect chaos to be chaotic. But I haven't read much Moorcock (the clear inspiration for much of the Warhammer world) so I'm not sure if his Chaos works differently.

The forces of chaos - in the 40K/Warhammer universe - seem unable to hold any sort of gains, despite all their cool powers, since they spend as much time (or more) fighting each other as they do the Imperium/Empire. At the same time, they can never be definitively defeated: they are always popping up someplace else. Essentially they are an awesome force of destruction, but not necessarily fated to win. In the Moorcock universe, the same is even more true - though Chaos wins in the Elric stories, it is defeated in the Corum stories: the explicit message being that in both cases, the victory is only temporary.

cheers, Mark

[Zane_Marlowe]

Right, I think the point was that Warhammer goes from REALLY dark to just kind of dark if you go from "the world WILL end with Chaos destroying everything," to "Chaos will never be decisively dealt with, and heroes can make real gains, even if they are only temporary." Add the humor element that goes with the Orcs, the Dwarves (cf. Bugman's brewery and the Book of Grudges), et al., and you've got a lot of fun.

(I've actually got half a mind to paint up a zombie regiment for the fantasy game and add a leadership unit in a red and black leather jump suit. When that regiment appears, I will then begin playing "Thriller" and give them a +1 dance-fighting bonus for their hero unit's special ability. I'll bet they could have some Vincent Price-inspired banner to march under. "To terrorize y'all's neighborhood." Can you dig it?)

Anyway, too much focus on Chaos will ruin anyone's day, and they aren't the most interesting elements of the setting IMO. If it dropped out entirely, you'd still have a first rate fantasy setting that wasn't half as dark as most people make it out to be.

[Roter Baron]

I really love the world, the setting and the 2nd edition rules - very fitting rule-system for the world it is supposed to represent. I also liked (and gmed) 1st edition though the magic system felt a little odd and was not on par with the flair (though I do not really like the new colleges, the wizrad carreers in the old edition ha da much grittier feel IMHO).

Regarding the 3rd edition: I playtested it yesterday in my local gaming shop and all of the players (just 3 including the gm, all longtime gamers) were not much impressed: Some good ideas, many nice gimmicks and new dice that can only be used for this game - R.I.P. to your dice colection, ain't gonna use 'em here, buddy - but a lot of fuzz that almost any other game can do quicker, smother and at a better price. Sure, there is a lot of cards and dice and more cards and little thingies and what-nots in the box, but it is only for 3 players and gm - if you have 4 players, get that supplement immidiately! And buy more dice! Make everybody to buy a set of dice.

We also see the plroblem that as soon you lose on of them cards the info on it is gone for good. And if you haven't used that card before you will never miss it (or rather late) since there is no list of the cards and what's on them. No index in the rulesbooks either. And if your soldier turns protagonist in his secodn career and your protagonist becomes a soldier you have a problem - the special career cards are only one time on the box. Time to shell out another 100$/ 69 € to get another set of cards (and another box) I guess.

Yep, gaming companies are in the business to make money - no problem with that. And I as a longtime-fanatic like to overspend on roleplaying goodies. But I don't like to see that I REALLY HAVE to buy stuff so that I can play the game.

Another thing: For us it was to much nto track. It is a very visual game (which is good) and the try to take your pen away from you as far as they can and have tokens and cards to keep track of virtual everything - fatigue, stress, fortune, wounds, critical wounds, recharge time on your powers etc. Nicely thought out, really. But it is a lot to keep track of and it is very easy to forget to flip cards, take/add time tokens etc.

There are a lot of good ideas in this game, be assured of that. But for me it is to board-gamey for a roleplaying game.

I would be glad to hear about your experiences with actual game-play, Killer Shrike.

[Kristopher]

I really love the world, the setting and the 2nd edition rules - very fitting rule-system for the world it is supposed to represent. I also liked (and gmed) 1st edition though the magic system felt a little odd and was not on par with the flair (though I do not really like the new colleges, the wizrad carreers in the old edition ha da much grittier feel IMHO).

Regarding the 3rd edition: I playtested it yesterday in my local gaming shop and all of the players (just 3 including the gm, all longtime gamers) were not much impressed: Some good ideas, many nice gimmicks and new dice that can only be used for this game - R.I.P. to your dice colection, ain't gonna use 'em here, buddy - but a lot of fuzz that almost any other game can do quicker, smother and at a better price. Sure, there is a lot of cards and dice and more cards and little thingies and what-nots in the box, but it is only for 3 players and gm - if you have 4 players, get that supplement immidiately! And buy more dice! Make everybody to buy a set of dice.

We also see the plroblem that as soon you lose on of them cards the info on it is gone for good. And if you haven't used that card before you will never miss it (or rather late) since there is no list of the cards and what's on them. No index in the rulesbooks either. And if your soldier turns protagonist in his secodn career and your protagonist becomes a soldier you have a problem - the special career cards are only one time on the box. Time to shell out another 100$/ 69 € to get another set of cards (and another box) I guess.

Yep, gaming companies are in the business to make money - no problem with that. And I as a longtime-fanatic like to overspend on roleplaying goodies. But I don't like to see that I REALLY HAVE to buy stuff so that I can play the game.

What you detail there sounds a lot like the Games Workshop business model in particular.

[Killer Shrike]

I would be glad to hear about your experiences with actual game-play, Killer Shrike.

I would too! If only I had some gamers to try it out with we'd both get what we want ;)

[BlackSword]

There are a lot of good ideas in this game, be assured of that. But for me it is to board-gamey for a roleplaying game.
Thanks for the review, you addressed a lot of my concerns regarding the unique cards and dice (and how many players could use a single box). Interesting that it is board-gamey.

[drsid]

After this discussion, the system seems intriguing. In essence, I can see a GM creating a few characters and the playing with the pre-generated ones. Also, I believe you can actually buy the various accessories/cards needed separately. I've seen some small player toolkit boxes at the local shop.

[Killer Shrike]

After this discussion, the system seems intriguing. In essence, I can see a GM creating a few characters and the playing with the pre-generated ones. Also, I believe you can actually buy the various accessories/cards needed separately. I've seen some small player toolkit boxes at the local shop.

I think you're probably seeing the expansion that has things like Dwarven Ironbreakers and Elven Wardancers and whatnot.

[Killer Shrike]

Well...it took a year, but I finally got a chance to play this yesterday.

It was just me and WilyQ, figuring it all out and starting the basic adventure in the back of the GM book.

It took about 3 hours of flipping and reading and card sorting and grousing to make four characters:

1 Dwarven Ironbreaker
1 Dwarven Agent
1 Human Priest of Sigmar
1 Human Bright Mage

We were going for a typical Fighter Mage Thief Cleric lineup, but warhammer style.

We started the adventure and did some rusty roleplaying to set up the adventure with Herr Hendricks (or whatever the guys name is), and got on the road to travel to the chaos beastmen beset hunting lodge in the middle of nowhere. We took some liberties with the assumed lead off to take advantage of / incorporate the particular make up of the group and "hook" them in to the story. More from habit than any real need. But otherwise we played it straight.

We got into the initial roadside ambush by beastmen, and stepped into combat mode.

For starters, the adventure didn't stipulate HOW MANY bad guys to use...or if it did I didn't see it with some harried flipping around. So, I settled on 2 Gor and 2 groups of Ungor Henchmen, evenly split and attacking from either side of the road.

The combat took about 4 hours total, but we stopped for food at some point and also we were obviously learning the game and doing a lot of head scratching and book flipping.

After the fact I consulted the FAQ and was relieved to find several things that we simply couldn't find any explanation of in the books covered, and a couple of things that didn't make any sense errata'd.

All in all, making educated guesses along the way, we managed to figure it out well enough to run the combat, though we made a big mistake regarding damage (STR adds to melee damage and AG adds to ranged damage, which we couldn't find spelled out in the relevant combat or injury sections, but apparantly is stated somewhere). However the damage thing applied to both sides so is kind of a wash...though doubtlessly it contributed to the fight taking longer.


The Wizard was flashy but almost got whacked and also exhausted himself very quickly, and spent the back half of the fight in active defense mode sucking wind and trying to rest...which was hard to do as he was 3 steps over to aggressive and slowly adjusting his stance 1 step per turn...he kept rolling exertions on his red dice on his Assess the Situation actions and thus couldn't "bleed off" stress. Of course, per the FAQ, if multiple exertion icons show up on a single roll, you only count it as 1 exertion unlike all the other dice icons which are cumulative, so that would have been lessened but I honestly think that's a retcon based on this very scenario..if you are way over in aggressive mode and need to recover its hard to do as the dice themselves are fighting you. If we had been doing damage correctly, the Wizard would have been KO'd or been very close to it, and it was only due to intervention by the Agent that he was even able to get away with staying out of the fight at all. Extremely squishy to an almost unplayable degree, which confirmed my initial feelings way back a year ago when I made "Ambrosious III" (see earlier post).

The Priest of Sigmar went all aggro, and didn't really have much of a chance to cast his spells, and just plied his two handed hammer and Basic Strike. The Dwarf Ironbreaker sat in conservative mode and supported and assisted the Priest, granting extra dice using his special ancestor action cards and the assist action, and occasionally using his big attack when it cooled off. Also, the Ironbreaker slotted his Tactic cards in the team slot which helped the team a lot. He didn't do a lot of direct damage, but really without his support the group would have been sunk so all in all I think that was a very cool thing...though it was odd to us as going in to it we expected him to be the main battle tank and do all the serious fighting. One downside, the Ironbreaker is really really really tough relative to everyone else between his armor, shield, and special action cards, but his attack capability is not overwhelming...which means he can be ignored until the rest of the group is wiped. A tank needs a way to MAKE bad guys pay attention to them so that their extra survivability can be used to help the team survive. We found ourselves wishing there were some kind of "Taunt" action card to facilitate that role...I suppose you could use the Attempt a Stunt card but this Ironbreaker doesn't have Intimidate or Guile or a high Fellowship to generate a dice pool with much chance of success at such an action.

The Dwarf Agent proved to be the surprise superstar. Not only did he have useful "face" skills out of combat, built around having Education and Folklore trained and some smart Talent choices, but being a Dwarf he also was able to train Weapon Skill and was thus a creditable warrior as well...funcationally almost as good as the Ironbreaker. The Ironbreaker also has Resilience and was able to invest in better stats at the expense of abilities, but the effect of the yellow "expertise" dice is very high. Now, with some advances the actual fighter types would pull away eventually as the Agent career offers little in the way of combat, but the combination of the naturally martial and durable Dwarf race with a social career allowed for a very capable starting character. But then again, as we all know, Warhammer Dwarfs are...well...pretty uber.


Anyway, the disarray of the rules was aggravating, plus we were both rusty as we haven't been gaming for a stretch now, but all in all we had a good time and I'm considering rolling down to the local game store and picking up some of the new material thats come out this past year in anticipation of the next opportunity to play.

[Killer Shrike]

We played the second session yesterday, picking up where we left off. The session went well, and we had a lot of fun. The plot line got short circuited by a stroke of extremely good luck, but I ran with it and made it work, ending on a cliff hanger. I have until the next session to figure out how to restructure the rest of the adventure or if I just go ahead and let events take their natural course vs trying to bend it back onto the plot rails.

In between sessions, I allowed the player to spend the 1 xp gained from the 1st session. At the end of the second session I allowed the player to spend the second xp as well. As far as I could determine from the main rule book and the GM's toolkit which I picked up earlier this week, it is intended for players to be able to spend their xp on advances whenever they like so long as it doesn't disrupt the game, which I'm philosophically ok with.

The Bright Mage bought +1 aggressive stance which paid off immediately this session as it helped the player pull off a couple of hard rolls, and also makes his one defensive spell work better as it confers a soak value equal to the Bright Mage's position on the stance meter; so aggressive stance 4 = 4 soak which is almost as good as plate mail. The second xp was spent on training Observation, which is a skill that repeatedly came up and no one had. The Bright Mage's 4 Int allowed him to get by, but it is a career skill, and training it allows the addition of a yellow expertise die to resolution rolls.

The yellow expertise die is high yield success goodness, and has a big impact on resolution rolls, at least as far as we've been able to figure thus far. So, a repeating theme this go around was training key skills.


The Dwarf Agent "trained" the Charm skill with the first xp but never got a chance to put it into play. The second xp bought another Talent card.

The Dwarf Ironbreaker bought a conservative stance with the 1st xp as it benefits most of his special actions, and the second xp went to training up Athletics to allow him to make the most out of his high Str.

The Human Priest of Sigmar put both xp points towards a non-career advance (which cost double or more depending on what the advance is for) to train Weapon Skill as he is supposed to be a Warrior Priest, but didn't have the option to train any fighting skills. It cost him twice as much, but now he can be a competent melee fighter.


Role-playing wise the character are starting to take shape and develop distinct personalities. The relative conservative vs aggressive concept is also showing forth in the roleplaying, which is cool. The very aggressive Bright Mage and Priest of Sigmar were impetuous and overbearing respectively, very much foot-forward and undiplomatic. The Bright Mage was very erratic and almost crazy seeming, bumbling / stumbling into things and disrupting status quo...which ultimately lead him to accidentally uncover hard evidence of the Chaos Cult at the heart of the adventure's plot like where a more conservative approach would have allowed the Cult to stay hidden. The Priest started off bluff and taciturn, but when challenged by an academic doctor with a science over superstition thing going on who refused to allow the Priest to lay hands on injured / insane people under the doctor's care, the Priest refused to step down and immediately went on the offensive. The Agent on the other hand, who has been played mildly conservatively, was smooth and diplomatic, and the very conservative ironbreaker was as stoic as a mountain, unruffled and under the radar.

So far so good....

[Vondy]

The Warhammer world always struck me as far darker than it needed to be. It's like the world will inevitably succumb to Chaos and the best PCs can do -- if they can do even that -- is hold in the water by plugging fingers into the dike. How it could survivie forty thousand more tears is beyond me.


It did strike me as being a "crapsack world (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CrapsackWorld)."

Which isn't always a bad thing....

[Killer Shrike]

It did strike me as being a "crapsack world (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CrapsackWorld)."

Which isn't always a bad thing....

Interestingly, the 3rd Edition dances around the traditional dystopian view of the Warhammer setting and points out that the GM and players control the tone of the game. Overall, it seems to be slightly _less_ dark than earlier editions by default, and leaves room for interpretation.

[Killer Shrike]

I've had time to go thru the Gamemaster's Toolkit (http://www.amazon.com/Warhammer-Fantasy-Roleplay-GM-Toolkit/dp/1589946995/) that I picked up last week in more detail.

The main feature of the boxed set is a very nice GM's screen made of thick board. It's super sturdy and makes the cardstock / posterboard GM's screens I've used in the past seem pretty wimpy. All GM's screens should be this nice. The info on the back seems to be useful, but this is such a rules light game that there's not a lot of need for the typical reference charts. There's just some reminders and game aids, really.

There's more stand-ups, and various chits and bits to supplement the ones in the core set. I mixed all the bits in with the core set personally.

For me the most interesting bits are the location cards (some also came with the core set), which are used to set up encounters in the abstract method the game favors. Each card has a flavor picture, depicting something like Secret Passage or City Gates or Forest Glade. On the back is a fluff piece of exposition, and a rules mechanic that affects people in that location. So, for instance, in the Forest Glade the two outer range categories are not available, constricting the size of an encounter and allowing people to run away into the forest easily. The Secret Passage only allows a limited number of combatants to be engaged in melee. Others might add fortune or misfortune dice for various thing's; such as the Audience Chamber which allows the owner of the chamber to add a fortune or misfortune die to any social resolution at their discretion.

Also included are Organization cards similar to the Adventuring Party cards available to PC's from the core set, but used by NPC groups. The Organization cards have two tracks, one for Stability and one for Agenda; as the group succeeds in their goals their Agenda progresses and they get various benefits at certain milestones. Conversely, as the group's goals are thwarted their Stability degrades and the group starts to fall apart, dwindle, become less effective, etc. Very convenient. I employed one of them, the Eldritch Circle, in the second session I described previously, for the Chaos Cult at the heart of the adventure.

There's a book of useful info for GM's. This is not your typical GM's "helper" however; it's actually quite useful. The bulk of the book is a series of three Act templates with variants and suggestions, allowing quick plot generation. They can even be used as events transpire in play; a GM scrambling to keep ahead of the players drifting into areas of no prep could find an appropriate template and use it to provide some ready made structure to an otherwise from the hip encounter. They are pretty well done, and useful beyond the context of WHFRP.

All in all, I'm very happy with this supplement, and feel like it was a good value for the money.

[Killer Shrike]

Fantasy Flight Games has released a series of repackaged supplements. The expensive core set has been broken down into two smaller boxed sets, one with the player bits and the other with the DM bits. I think some of the stuff from later sets is also in there, but I'm not 100% on that as I don't have x-ray vision to look into the box and I didn't buy either as I have the core set and other supplements.

The rules have been extracted into two hardbacks, and definitely do collate material from the key supplements as well as clearing up some of the confusing areas, and presenting a "Warhammer Lite" version that is a more traditional book and paper based experience. All the cards, including talents and most usefully careers, are now printed in book form as you would expect from 36 years of roleplaying game precedence, and a player can simply write out a copy on paper for ease of reference or refer to the book as they prefer.


I picked up the Players Guide, for $54. Yes, I could get it cheaper online, but I'm one of those saps who still tries to support local game stores unless its simply not convenient. So, basically, if I go to a store and they have what I want, I buy it on the spot. If they don't have what I want, I go home and order it online from the publisher. If the publisher doesn't have an e-Store I buy it from one of the more reputable gaming-centric sites or Amazon. It's like a descending hierarchy of who get's my cash; local, talent source, faceless retailer. But I digress.


The Player's Guide is a very hefty hardback, full color, with excellent production values. I spotted a number of typos and obvious errors however. That's FFG for you; they pay a lot of attention to the physical details but don't seem to prioritize editorial oversight.

The rules are arranged in a clearer fashion, and some key sections have additional excerpts or summation paragraphs that make certain vague things clearer. There is still some disarray, but unlike the core set where you'd have to look thru 4 books to (maybe) find an answer, at least now you are just flipping thru the one book.

Reading the clarified rules on character creation, for instance, we gimped our starting characters a little bit. This being Warhammer, when there was doubt about whether a character got something or didn't get something we erred on the side of miserliness but for the most part the clarified rules err on the side of the player and are a bit more permissive. We'll have to go back and make some tweaks to make sure the PC's got everything they were due.

The career section in particular is extremely useful. Being able to see everything all in one go, including the career ability (which in card form is printed not on the career sheet itself but rather on an additional tiny little card), makes career plotting much easier.

Similarly, the ability listings is, for me, much easier to go thru than flipping thru dozens of cards and reading both sides to see if there are any differences. I'm very visual and "read" or take in everything I see at once so being able to see both "sides" of an ability on one page is much easier for me to absorb / assimilate. Using the cards I sometimes have to flip back and forth a few times and carefully re-read both sides to make sure I'm spotting the differences where as looking at the different aspects side by side I can usually "see" the differences at a glance. That might just be me though.

Anyway, having the option to get a traditional version of the game addresses my main concerns with this version of the rules regarding the various bits, losing cards, the time consuming aspect of flipping thru lots of tactiles to get the essential info, and so forth. I'm glad FFG decided to offer both approaches rather than "sticking to its guns" or "artistic sensibilities" and only providing for their more innovative but not necessarily more playable bit and card approach. Now you can play at either extreme (bits and cards only, or rules only), but if you combine the two I think it's actually an even more powerful combination as you get the best of both styles. You can use the rules version at design time, and the card / bits version at run time.

I must admit, now that we're actually playing this game I'm becoming somewhat enamored of it. It's a lot more fun and mechanically deeper than it's boardgame-like appearance suggests.