General RPG DiscussionDiscussion of all RPGs and non-system-specific topics. DM/GM/player issues, settings, etc. Rules discussion belongs in one the forums below.
WFRP is a roleplaying game originally released in 1986 to go along with Games Workshop's famous Warhammer tabletop miniatures war game.
To be brief; it has since passed from publisher to publisher over the years. Currently it has been picked up by Fantasy Flight Games after Black Industries shut down their roleplaying lines.
Why is this game awesome?
Look at the front cover of the book:
See those badasses right there? You're not one of them. Chances are you will start out the game as the medieval equivalent of a fast food employee or ticked-tearer at the movie theater. Among the beginning careers you can start out as are; Boatman, Bone Picker, Camp Follower, Charcoal-Burner, Fisherman, Miner, Peasant, Rat Catcher, Servant and Valet. You could also possibly start out as a semi-badass, like a Mercenary or a Shieldbreaker.
The point is; if you are playing the game right you will roll completely randomly to determine your starting career. That is because this game emphasizes working with what fate hands you. Back in the gritty days of the Warhammer universe a person didn't really choose what they were born into, it was their lot in life. That's part of what makes this game so awesome, you have to work with what you get.
But just because your character was born into the life of a fisherman doesn't mean he has to stay there. That's another reason this game is awesome you can potentially BECOME a badass like the characters on the cover. In WFRP even a lowly fisherman can become a Captain in an army if he survives long enough.
That fact that you start off a lowly weakling to me is a breath of fresh air from games like D&D where your character is already a monster-smiting hero at level 1. You've got to earn your stripes in this game. Don't get me wrong, I like D&D but sometimes it's a little too epic for me. Sometimes it's the simple challenges that have the most rewards like getting to eat today.
Careers? Levels?
There are no levels in WFRP. What there are, are careers. Careers are literally professions that all characters in the game take to make their way in the world. A character's starting career represents what he did before he decided to become an adventurer.
The way advancement works is a character gets experience which is basically points to buy stats, skills and talents. Mechanically a career is like a template with available stat-ups, skills and talents that you may buy with experience to make your character better at something. Once you've bought all a careers available options then you may not buy anymore and it is time to advance to your NEXT career. A character's general capability can be assessed by how many careers he's advanced through.
Your starting career is almost filled out completely, representing that you've spent most of your life getting good at it. There are also advanced careers which you cannot start a new character in but can advance to later. These careers are generally much more powerful. There are a total of 100 careers in the core book. The Career Compendium has a total of 220 careers from all the different sources of the game.
What's combat like?
In D&D combat is usually a solution to most problems. In WFRP, if you've gotten into combat then usually something has gone wrong.
Combat is hard and gritty. Permanent damage to characters like limb loss and insanity is common. Survivability can be enhanced by wearing armor on top of armor and being a hearty bastard, but in the long run it's usually better to avoid being hit in the first place. When conflict is inevitable clever tactics usually bring the most reward; ambushes, surprise attacks and superior numbers.
Is there magic?
Oh there's magic all right. It is incredibly powerful and dangerous. Setting-wise most people are very distrustful of magic-users likening it to witchcraft and demonic arts. The Empire strictly controls all wizards. It is possible to start the game as an Apprentice Wizard. If you've been lucky enough to roll this starting career than you can look forward a short terrifying life or less likely a long and terrifying one.
What's the setting like?
Oh man, the setting is pretty huge. There is so much Warhammer material out there that I couldn't possibly cover all of the main points in a single post. The best source for setting material is probably the tabletop game itself. WFRP strangely doesn't have as much of the setting covered as the tabletop game I find. I reckon there are a lot of people on this forum who have played a lot of Warhammer and are much more knowledgeable about the details than me.
Basically the main setting is the Empire. The Empire is a lot like medieval Germany in structure and flavor. The Empire consists of humans who have had an alliance with Dwarves for over 2000 years. There are elves as well, but they are largely xenophobic and stick to their trees. Halflings populate the Empire as well as second-class citizens.
The terrain of the Empire consists of mostly dense forests. All manner of horrible, horrible things can lie hidden in these forests, so the citizens of the Empire stick together in dense pockets of civilization and if they must travel, they do so on the roads.
Aside from typical baddies like ratmen, trolls and undead, the threat of Chaos is always present in the minds of the citizenry. Chaos is a demonic power that constantly leaks into the world and can affect the minds and bodies of the vulnerable people who fall victim to it. It can also bring with it demons, which are bad.
Can you play WFRP on Maptools?
Apparently you can! Emirikol gives us the lowdown:
Quote:
Originally Posted by Emirikol
The Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay Maptool Project
This project's purpose is to encourage play of WFRP on Maptool by making it quick and easy for a GM to get a game started with little or now start-up work.
Here's how you do it:
1. Own the WFRP core rulebook (available as PDF at RPGnow.com)
2. Download Maptool version 1.3b56 or newer
3. Download a voice chat system such as Skype or Ventrillo
4. Download the campaign file (or any maptooled scenario) below and save it to your >.maptool>campaignthumb folder. If it's a zip, extract it.
5. Download the monster tokens below. Save it to your >.maptool>resources>default>tokens file folder. If it's a zip, extract them.
6. Download the guide to playing WFRP on Maptool below.
Fantasy Flight Games is currently the publisher. However to my knowledge the core book along with many others are OUT OF PRINT. Though I guess you can buy them in PDF form from the website. If you're looking for a new game to try I highly recommend this one.
If you want to see an example of how a campaign plays out you can read my Story Hour Thread about it.
Also pawsplay wrote up my favorite summary of a beginning level game:
Quote:
Originally Posted by pawsplay
A typical campaign goes like this. The players roll up characters and you end up with a halfling baker, a human rat-catcher, and a dwarven soldier. They meet in a rat-infested tavern and see a poster advertising a reward for the capture of an infamous bandit. Gathering up a handful of used weapons, some bedrolls, and the services of an untrustworthy wilderness guide, they go in search of the bandit. After a battle in which they slay several bandit guards, during which the dwarven soldier loses his foot, permanently, they corner the bandit. He turns out to be a demonic cultist and immobilizes the halfling with a spell. Then the rat-catcher hits the cultist in the stomach with an axe-handle, and then beats the helpless cultist to death. They search for treasure. Finding what appears to be a magical amulet and a glowing sword, they bury them under a rock and vow never to speak of them again. They find some pocket change in the cultist's pocket, sever his head, and return to town to collect the reward. The local magistrate rewards them. On the way back to the tavern, a fanatical witch hunter who was also trailing the bandit corners the halfling and tries to extort the reward from him. Later, they set a trap for the witch hunter and kill him. Then they find out he is an initiate of a local religious order and have to flee the town or risk arrest and execution. On the way out of town, bandits surround them. The dwarf mutters, "Do you know who we are?" The bandits don't, and attack. The one-legged dwarf dies. The baker and the rat-catcher use that opportunity to flee and hide.
The baker and rat-catcher earn enough XP for one advance. When they complete their careers, the baker thinks he might like to be an outlaw, while the rat-catcher starts looking at good ways to enter the witch hunter career.
I'll start this off by asking other experienced players of this game how you generally handle economy. There seems to be no real advice in the core book about how quickly players should be amassing material possessions. This can affect the game if the players aren't earning enough for their trappings for their next careers or if they have so much money that it basically isn't a problem for them.
The rule I've been making is copy-pasted from my story hour thread:
Quote:
Originally Posted by Sanzuo
When the players loot a pile of hand weapons and a few chain mail shirts, that adds up to quite a bit of money going by the prices set in the book. Logically I figure a vendor would buy those items from the PCs for about half of what they're worth if he figures he can sell them.
But as one of my players put it; if the vendor lowballs the PCs too much (either he doesn't have the money to pay what the PCs want or they're simply not worth that much to him) what's stopping the PCs from hanging on to all that crap and becoming vendors themselves, selling it to other adventurers who are just crapping money as well?
I figured I would use the middle ground to keep the game moving along. Roleplaying the players setting up their own "Used Armour Shoppe" might be realistic but it isn't terribly exciting.
What percentage of value to pawnbrokers usually pay? I'd be kind of surprised if it was as high as half. You have to figure the merchant isn't actually going to be able to sell used (bloodstained, chipped, dented, rent-open-by-axes) stuff at full price, right?
I mean, in D&D, yeah, sure, whatever. But for a grim world of perilous adventure? Suck it up, rat catcher! Maybe some day you'll be able to aspire to a glorious career as a pawnbroker; but for now, back to the trauma-soaked world of "adventure", and be happy you've got a few coins in your pocket and not some chaos-tainted extra appendage.
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I'll start this off by asking other experienced players of this game how you generally handle economy.
I work on the assumption that the economics presented in WFRP (any edition) don't work at all. Based on that assumption, I handwave most of the dealings with money and gold.
I'm toying with the idea of introducing a wealth system similar to d20 Modern (and James Bond 007 and maybe Call of Cthulhu to some extent), where you don't have cash per se but instead a rating that shows what you have available.
/M
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Also pawsplay wrote up my favorite summary of a beginning level game:
Thanks Sanzuo. I will chime in with Sanzuo on this being a pretty cool game. It is a grim and gritty world which is pretty cool. I ran a WFRP 1st edition for about a year before abandoning the group, but I do have a ton of 2nd edition books and really, really enjoy the system.
Should it replace your D&D game? No, as I don't believe in any one game being better than the other. However, if you want to try something different but still be in fantasy, this would always be my first recommendation for a different fantasy game.
I love WFRP. It's horror meets gritty D&D, and it's ridiculously fun.
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WFRP is probably my all-time favorite fantasy game. I have a deep and abiding love for D&D as a game, but for the whole system-setting-flavor-atmosphere, WFRP wins for me hands down.
At the moment I'm trying very, very, very, hard not to ditch my Eberron game (1 session in) and start a WFRP game. It's a very difficult thing to do.
I really, really really really wonder what Fantasy Flight is going to do with WFRP3e? 2e was hardly broken by any stretch of the imagination. I didn't even know people were clamoring for a revision.
I really, really really really wonder what Fantasy Flight is going to do with WFRP3e? 2e was hardly broken by any stretch of the imagination. I didn't even know people were clamoring for a revision.
Yeah, I'm pretty happy with my 2e books that I haven't really had a chance to use yet. Someday soon, hopefully. Cool game, for sure.
I really, really really really wonder what Fantasy Flight is going to do with WFRP3e? 2e was hardly broken by any stretch of the imagination. I didn't even know people were clamoring for a revision.
It would be nice if the FF guys took on some of the Green Ronin guys since they're the ones who wrote the current version - which is awesome.
My complaints about the current edition? Hmmm... let me see. I don't have many. The rules that aren't fleshed out can easily be called on by the GM.
It seems that the rumors for a version 3 of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay are not ending. Recently a post in Graham McNeil’s blog mentioned playtesting WFRP 3 which lead to a flood of forum-posts at the StS-forums as well as the FFG-WFRP-forums. What concerns some people is the fact that the game mechanics (according to Mr. McNeil) seem to be very different from what we know from its predecessors:“The game was very different to anything I’ve played before, with a lot of table space taken up by character sheets, action and ability cards, dice etc. It felt like a strange hybrid of board game and roleplaying game at first, but once the notions of the new mechanics took hold, it felt very natural.”, Graham McNeil writes.
I think I’m not alone when I say that the first impression I had was: oh, FFG jumps on the D&D 4e bandwagon. . From a business view it makes perfectly sense: people who liked D&D 4e might give this game a try. But would that be WFRP anymore? So some people are already seeing the Dark Ages coming back. Just to steal this pessimists the thunder: all we have up to now is a post in someones blog, this person might be in good contact with GW and FFG, nevertheless we are still lacking an official statement from FFG or GW. So as long as they remain silent a WFRP 3 is not confirmed.
If the rumors are true we will see. It might take some time until the game will published. And then we could give it a try. Perhaps its not a bad game? Who can tell? If it is in fact a D&D 4e clone I doubt that I’ll play it - why play the copy when you can play the original? Therefore I think that there is no need for panic - even if WFRP does not continue to be the game we knew, what keeps us from playing WRFP v1/v2 in the future?
I think there's another thread somewhere about that WFRP3e description.
I'd hold off before panicking, but would not be surprised if FFG put out an excellent - but very different - WFRP game. They need to sell core books to turn a profit, and they can't sell new core books to a market who already has them.
As for me, I love both WFRP2e and D&D 4e, but just like any game, I'd want to evaluate any WFRP3e on its own merits. If I don't like it, I already have almost everything produced for 2e, so I'm not particularly worried.
I think it's about time I buy myself the 2nd edition. So no, not moving quickly on this one. Sometimes I pounce on a game when it first comes out (or before, even!) and sometimes it's like this. Oh well.
The 1st ed. stuff still holds a special place on the bookshelf, but from most of what I've heard, 2nd is strictly better. And it sure looks pretty. Well, 'pretty' anyway.
I haven't actually had the pleasure to play WFRP 2e yet, but it is such a beautifully laid out game and the mechanics seem top notch. If i wasn't having such a good time with 4e, and i was deperate to branch out and try something new, i'd be all over Warhammer. I'm just sort of concerned that FF will put out a different but equally awesome game and i'll feel compelled to buy that too and not use it much.
Probably my favorite thing about WFRP is the career system. I just like the idea that what you start out as has no bearing on your potential - that a servant could become a knight or a camp follower could become a master wizard.
That's something I wish they had in Dark Heresy. When you pick/roll a career in DH it seems a lot more restrictive. Although I love DH's setting and combat (gunfire) rules.
If they at least kept the career system I think I would be happy. My greatest fear is if they revamp the careers so you automatically start out as a "high level" career. EI, Level 1 Warrior Priest of Sigmar. Starting out as a ditchdigger is the cornerstone of the game in my opinion.
OK, slightly goofy question. I know back in the old days of Warhammer Fantasy RPG there was a career or background where you could be a former Blood Bowl player. I imagine that is not in there any more, but it would be nice if it were.
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OK, slightly goofy question. I know back in the old days of Warhammer Fantasy RPG there was a career or background where you could be a former Blood Bowl player. I imagine that is not in there any more, but it would be nice if it were.
Wow, why don't I remember that (been a long time since I played 1e)? No, it's not there now, but it would be awesome.
Wow, why don't I remember that (been a long time since I played 1e)? No, it's not there now, but it would be awesome.
Now that I think of it - it doesn't sound like it would be too hard to come up with your own careers. It's not like you have to worry about it being too "balanced."
OK, slightly goofy question. I know back in the old days of Warhammer Fantasy RPG there was a career or background where you could be a former Blood Bowl player. I imagine that is not in there any more, but it would be nice if it were.
I don't remember ever seeing a career like that for WFRP, but the Ex-Blood Bowl Player was presented as a player character for Warhammer Quest in an issue of Citadel Journal. Issue #16, I think, though I may be wrong.
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