Thinking about Warhammer?

[the Jester]

And when I say "riches" I mean a decent set of clothing, food that isn't rotting already and a weapon that probably won't break the next time you swing it.

Yeah- in the WH campaign we played (currently on indefinite hiatus, since the gm has had two babies- hi omrob!) my pc was almost done with his second career, and I have never seen a magic item. I don't know where his character sheet was, but if I recall correctly, I have no money at present, though I do have a job guarding a boat (started as a seaman, now a marine). No special gear, although I do have some chain mail and leather armor.

And a gaffe hook. And a shortbow that I took from a bandit we killed, who later turned out to have been more or less a Robin Hood figure.

 

[Rel]

Yeah- in the WH campaign we played (currently on indefinite hiatus, since the gm has had two babies- hi omrob!) my pc was almost done with his second career, and I have never seen a magic item. I don't know where his character sheet was, but if I recall correctly, I have no money at present, though I do have a job guarding a boat (started as a seaman, now a marine). No special gear, although I do have some chain mail and leather armor.

And a gaffe hook. And a shortbow that I took from a bandit we killed, who later turned out to have been more or less a Robin Hood figure.

A gaffe hook?! AND a shortbow?!

What kind of Monty Haul campaign is this!?

 

[Nebulous]

A gaffe hook?! AND a shortbow?!

What kind of Monty Haul campaign is this!?

So, tell me about this lack of magic items and goody loot. Would our regular D&D players find this too drastic a change, not accumlating anything of value? In some ways the campaign setting reminds me a lot of Midnight, where just surviving to the next dawn is reward enough.

I would probably have to squeeze in a magic item or two, something appropriate to the setting. Like a devil-possessed amulet that gives you an extra wound, but has the unfortunate habit of screaming your position to enemies at inoportune times. In fact, cursed items seem to fit perfectly in Warhammer!

 

[Rel]

So, tell me about this lack of magic items and goody loot. Would our regular D&D players find this too drastic a change, not accumlating anything of value? In some ways the campaign setting reminds me a lot of Midnight, where just surviving to the next dawn is reward enough.

I would probably have to squeeze in a magic item or two, something appropriate to the setting. Like a devil-possessed amulet that gives you an extra wound, but has the unfortunate habit of screaming your position to enemies at inoportune times. In fact, cursed items seem to fit perfectly in Warhammer!

Cursed items do indeed fit right into WFRP.

I think that magic items in WFRP are better suited to being plot devices than "giving bonuses". Again with a nod to me adapting it for Pirates of the Caribbean, Jack Sparrow's compass that points to whatever his heart truly desires is the sort of magic item I tended to put into my games.

Another example from my campaign is that I had an NPC who was a 9 year old boy who first saw almost his whole family killed in front of him and later was captured by Beastmen to use in a ritual (he was rescued before the end of it by the PC's). One result of this was that part of his soul was put into a little "voodoo doll". It later kept him from dying.

This kind of stuff makes magic items more mysterious and sinister than everybody have a +2 longsword. I'm not knocking +2 longswords: I'm getting ready to kick off a 4e game. I'm just saying that this different flavor feels right for WFRP to me.

 

[Nebulous]

This kind of stuff makes magic items more mysterious and sinister than everybody have a +2 longsword. I'm not knocking +2 longswords: I'm getting ready to kick off a 4e game. I'm just saying that this different flavor feels right for WFRP to me.

Oh, i'm enjoying 4e quite a bit too. I'll probably get tired of it eventually, and hopefully around that time i'll be able to kickstart a Warhammer campaign. Finding players and time can sometimes be difficult, especially if we're not all one the same page.

"Trust me, it's fun when your character goes crazy and is devoured by a ratman tribe! Really!"

And for what it's worth, i do find +2 swords in D&D pretty boring. Highly useful and desired, but boring. I actually just finished putting together a new Bag of Tricks for our campaign. Hopefully it will inject some of that old skool feel for magic again. It's not a Daily-based magic item.

 

[Iron Sky]

We played a brief Dark Heresy 40k game before 4e came out. In a few demi-phrases: it's gritty; psykers can be amazingly cool and you hate to have them in your party; player characters will die.

One player was used to D20-style combat, so stood out in the open, blasting away with his lasgun. Since the rest of us were in cover, the enemies all turned on him and - in spite of their crappy skill and shoddy weapons - nearly dropped him. He hobbled over to hide behind a tent and a maniac with a meat cleaver took his leg off. The rest of the players said, "well, that was dumb" and fought for our lives as he bled out in the mud.

Our psyker chick had unnatural degree of bad luck. Every combat she used a power, she manifested something bad. One player - with the great randomly-generated name Verbal Sham - was on the verge of blowing her brains out since he'd taken the short end of the mis-channeled Warp energy stick and was about to start mutating (instant death sentence in 40k).

Before he could do that though, she was dropped and unconcious when my character missed with a molotov cocktail. A couple random deviation rolls and instead of throwing it 5m in front of him, he threw it 4m to his right, exactly on top of the unconcious psyker. She was not mourned.

Verbal Sham, our Scum(yes, that's one of the classes) got his face chopped off with one of said cleavers too - which was unfortunate since he wasthe parties' face. He just wasn't the same with an artificial jaw/voice box.

I think playing my assassin in that game was the first time in a roleplaying game that I really regretted being so combat specialized. I was litterally almost useless at anything but scouting and fighting: in social skills I had the equivalent of a -9 in a D20 system, 5% chance to succeed at even the most basic task.

I was actually almost envious as our Adept and Scum did their investigations, rooting out cultists, searching forbidden lore on the demon we thought we might be up against, shmoozing it with the spacedock workers. I really like how players have these sorts of specializations, really makes you need the other players to get the job done.

I'd highly recommend Dark Heresy. Solid rule system, great art, grim'n'gritty setting, the ability to be a kick-ass hero and still be terrified of the things you might face.

Never played Fantasy. Might check it out once we've got our 4e games wrapped up...

 

[Nebulous]

I'd highly recommend Dark Heresy. Solid rule system, great art, grim'n'gritty setting, the ability to be a kick-ass hero and still be terrified of the things you might face.

Never played Fantasy. Might check it out once we've got our 4e games wrapped up...

Yes, i'd like to see a straight up comparison between Fantasy and Dark Heresy. Your example sounded like fun. Bleak, gory, debiliating, insanity- inducing fun.

 

[JackSmithIV]

I'm not sure if Fantasy Flight still carries it (it was a Green Ronin adventure path), but if it's still around, get the Paths of the Damned adventure path. It's probably hard to find, but it's one of the original adventure paths published for the game, and is in my opinion the best introduction to the Warhammer Fantasy world.

It takes you from the Middenheim area, to the capital city of the Empire, to the gunpowerder city of Nuln, and covers a range of enemies. You fight Beastmen, Skaven, Undead, Heretics, everyone. There's multiple subplots, excellent roleplaying opportunities (half of the second module is playing power-broker to a diverse cast of important citizens of Altdorf), and will show your players the best of what Warhammer Fantasy has to offer. I was a long-time fan of Warhammer Fantasy, so when it came time to run my group through a campaign, I chose this one. It was the only campaign I ran with the group, because by the end, we felt like we'd acheived such a complete experience of the core of the game.

We may try other ventures later, such as exploring other parts of the world like Bretonia, or my favorite Warhammer locations, Khemri.

I love WFRP. It's not my game of choice, because to my group it's a one-trick pony for us. By the end of our WFRP campaign, the players kind of got tired of being constantly kicked in the face by the whole game world and decided to go back to D&D because they wanted to be heroes again. Don't get me wrong though, the whole desperation of the game is why we loved it so much. It just gets to be tiring after a while. We also love World of Darkness, because it gets to that same kind of WFRP dark grittiness.

 

[doppelganger]

I'm not sure if Fantasy Flight still carries it (it was a Green Ronin adventure path), but if it's still around, get the Paths of the Damned adventure path. It's probably hard to find, but it's one of the original adventure paths published for the game, and is in my opinion the best introduction to the Warhammer Fantasy world.

If you only get the first adventure of the trilogy, do be aware that the other two are better. The first one has a lot of "if the party goes left, they get to their destination, but if the party goes right, they are all killed in a wagon accident' situations. This may be considered 'true to setting' by some people, but it is also a quick ticket to a TPK (which is also true to setting, in a good way, now that I think about it!).

 

[Obryn]

If you only get the first adventure of the trilogy, do be aware that the other two are better. The first one has a lot of "if the party goes left, they get to their destination, but if the party goes right, they are all killed in a wagon accident' situations. This may be considered 'true to setting' by some people, but it is also a quick ticket to a TPK (which is also true to setting, in a good way, now that I think about it!).

I think the main difference is that the first one is a giant, often poorly-written, railroad, while the later ones are much more free-form.

Ashes of Middenheim commits several major sins, IMHO. Right at the outset it puts plot-essential information on the far side of some die rolls, and from there it makes a lot of assumptions about what the PCs will do. It also has some balance issues, since you're stuck in a very tough fight right at the end that I don't think any group of PCs could handle without divine intervention. WFRP2 should be tough - don't get me wrong - but it's silly. (Take away the Knights' helmets, by the way. They shouldn't have them anyway.) The Middenheim sourcebook attached to it rocks, though.

Spires of Altdorf, OTOH, is extremely free-form with some events to throw in when appropriate and a wide net of social interactions. It's heavy on investigation, with a lot of very Warhammer-esque surprises.

I have not delved into Forges of Nuln, but I understand it's much more similar to Altdorf.

-O