Review of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay

JoeGKushner said:

I wouldn't know about that. I mean in White Dwarf 300 they were talking about how poorly the game sold and how there were like only 5000 role players in the world no? And that's from the horses's mouth.

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That article has been widely mocked for having no relation to the real world.

BelenUmeria said:

I still do not see why so many people are "offended" by the review.

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I'm pretty sure that previous posts of mine (three of which were themselves replies to posts of yours) addressed that, so I'll quote from them here:

Jonny Nexus said:

But the second edition of WFRP - a game I'm also a huge admirer of - simply was not derived from 3rd Ed D&D. I felt it was dishonest for Dancy to say so, and given that he was one of the people behind 3rd Ed D&D, it seemed like he was trying to unfairly take the credit for an achievement that wasn't his.

That was entirely my beef. It wasn't elitism. It wasn't anti-D20ism. It wasn't about giving the "guy on top" a kicking (in fact, it could be argued that given Dancy's recent difficulties, the guys at Green Ronin are much more the "big guys" than he is).

Now I can't speak for everyone in this thread, but that's where I'm coming from.

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And...

Jonny Nexus said:

The review didn't "compare" WFRP2 to D&D3. It said that it was *derived* from D&D3, which simply isn't true. It's a fundamentally different system that shares a small number of common concepts, most of which are also shared with many other games. Given the history (Dancy worked on D&D3, Dancy has had a public falling out with the team behind WFRP2) this therefore came across as a not particularly thinly veiled accusation of, if not plagerism, then an attempt to cast doubt on how much Green Ronin can take credit for the game.

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And...

Jonny Nexus said:

The point you seem to be missing is that it is a matter of opinion as to whether or not it is a positive review.

Some people believe that it is a positive review.

Other people believe that it is using positive sounding language in order to convey a negative impression of the product. (i.e. they think that it is implying that WFRP is an inferior copy of D&D).

It is your opinion that it's a positive review. That's a perfectly valid opinion to hold, but I don't think it's constructive to treat it as a fact, and then criticise peoples' behaviour on the basis of that assumed fact.

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And...

Jonny Nexus said:

I don't agree with personal attacks, but this review does seem to have a very slanted view.

It's a bit like someone "reviewing" a novel by saying, "XXXX is a very good novel, which is not surprising because it is largely derived from the novel YYYY, which I wrote some years ago". If - in that example - it turned out that the novel XXXX was not in any way derived from the novel YYYY, the author of XXXX - and his or her supporters - would rightly be very aggrieved. Defending the actions of the "reviewer" by saying that his actions were likely to encourage people who'd read and enjoyed YYYY to go out and read XXXX would, in my opinion, be somewhat missing the point.

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I can't speak for everyone, but I hope those explain why the review offended me.

Of course Jonny is polite, he's british, for Sigmar's sake!

And a RPG personality in his own right, in many circles more influential than Mr Dancey.

(note that I didn't say "most" circles, juts "many")

Re: intelligent fungus orcs.

Olive said:

It doesn't say either way...

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That's a shame. I always thought the idea could be pretty cool if it was written well.

mhacdebhandia said:

Re: intelligent fungus orcs.


That's a shame. I always thought the idea could be pretty cool if it was written well.

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I though the "intelligent fungus" angle was from WH40K? But this is from someone who has no idea about WH other than what's in the RPG.

MonsterMash said:

Not certain about this, especially in the UK and rest of Europe where WHFRP was very popular at one time.

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Obviously I can't back it up with hard numbers.

I will say that most of the die hard WFR players I know -used- to play.

I used to play back in HS but there is only so much you can do with a game system that has a small number of products (mostly out of print) and isn't being developed.
One of my players is a long time WFR player who ultimately went to DnD because there were no other players, no products, etc.

The point with that line was just that the idea that RD is trying to steal away WFR players by saying DnD is similar to WFR misses the point that (I expect) virtually every WFR player is also a (reluctant I am sure) DnD player.

For every Jonny Nexus (who's Critial Miss web-zine should be read by every roleplaying gamer who understands English) who still plays mostly WFR there are probably 99 people like me and my WFR loving buddy who play DnD now (even if we talk about how fun/wonky WFR was and how we can incorperate more of it into DnD).

Well Graf has a good point. Example?

My latest D&D campaign (now I'm running WLD in a "regular campaign, but that's sort of beside the point) had.. Skavens, the Chaos Gods (and their mutated cultists), Sigmar as a God, dwarven troll/giant slayers, the towns of Altdorf and Middenheim, blase students, etc..

So why wasn't I just running WFRP? None of my players know the system, and none of us (me included) have the books. And before this new edition came out, getting even just the main book would have been sort of arduous around here. D&D? It's at Waldenbooks. They don't really need "misleading reviews".

I do play in a WFRP game on-line though. And even thought it's in the new edition, and all I -remember- (and all I ever played!) was the first edition, it's easy for me to play. So yeah, it's still pretty close to it's roots.

And Nexus does rock, even though CM hasn't updated in 72 years.

Graf said:

For every Jonny Nexus (who's Critial Miss web-zine should be read by every roleplaying gamer who understands English)

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Thanks!

Graf said:

who still plays mostly WFR there are probably 99 people like me and my WFR loving buddy who play DnD now (even if we talk about how fun/wonky WFR was and how we can incorperate more of it into DnD).

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Well I do feel I should just point out here that I play a lot more D&D than I play WFRP. We did one big WFRP campaign, on and off, for two or three years, but that has now finished. Although I did buy the WFRP2 rulebook, my playing experience of that is limited to a game at the convention where it was launched. One of my Sunday group, John, has bought the game and I believe is thinking of running a campaign, but that will be after he finishes his current Call of Cthulhu (BRP) campaign that we've been playing, on and off, for well over a year now.

Meanwhile, I'm currently playing (besides that CoC campaign), *three* on and off D&D campaigns, one on Sunday and two on Thursday.

My point being that I'm genuinely not a D20 hater who plays WFRP but not D&D.

Barak said:

And Nexus does rock,

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On behalf of my ego I thank you!

Barak said:

even though CM hasn't updated in 72 years.

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I've been busy. You know how it is: one moment the newspapers are full of FDR and the New Deal, then you get a bit distracted and before you know it you've missed a world war, a cold war, the fall of communism and a whole bunch of other stuff.

Anyhow, just for the record...

I have been doing a few other things, which should be listed in my sig (including a blog) and which people who liked CM might be interested in (one of which managed to achieve the *lowest* ENWorld rating in Mongoose's history). But the main thing is that I'm currently trying to get into novel and comic writing which is currently absorbing a lot of my creative energies.

Numion said:

Hmm. I don't know where this idea comes from - it doesn't come from WFRP 1E. I only have the 2E main book, so I can't comment on 2E. 1E, however, does have Dragons, really fantastic demons, liches, vampires, Jabberwocky (yeah, that one), etc .. 1E Old World is filled with the usual D&D tripe, sorry.

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the diference is that you don't have them all around the place. you might have hints of them, but my experience with D&D is that you tend to encounter a beholder, a dragon, a powerful undead, demons, and similar monsters once every two or three sessions...
not so in warhammer. while the monsters are still there, they are exactly that: monstrousities! (as opposed to fairly mundane opponents with weird to horrible looks).