Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 4E Details Emerge

Redditor Paidin_Brewer reported new insights about Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 4th Edition by Cubicle 7 from PAX Unplugged. What follows are the details the redditor learned -- early summer 2018 release, draws heavily on 1E and 2E, and no re-issued versions of older campaigns.

"In hopes of breaking loose some more information on the upcoming 4th edition of Warhammer Fantasy, I stopped by the Cubicle 7 booth at Pax Unplugged. The employee I spoke to was very excited about the upcoming 4e as a player, but wasn’t on that specific marketing team. He mostly stuck to the talking points others have reported here, but he was helpful in clarifying a few questions I had. I wasn’t recording the discussion, so you’re stuck with my memories unfortunately. Hopefully these tid-bits will help you all too."

We’ve heard this game will be out by the end of the year, is it still on track for a release around Christmas?

He has seen the cover art and it’s great, but it is very unlikely to be out by the end of the calendar year. What they meant was that it will be out before the end of the Fiscal Year, or sometime in the early Summer of 2018

Will the career system still be the primary form of advancement?

He couldn’t confirm how the character would advance, but the system will draw heavily on 1e and 2e. Some of the refinements from 3e will be present if you know where to look for them, but by and large it’ll be dice based like the older versions.

There is a ton of great Warhammer material published in 1e / 2e, will you be re-issuing campaigns with updated rulesets?

Very, very unlikely. Little to no money to be made selling products already widely available. Fans are encouraged to update the existing campaigns on their own. Some conversation guidance may be offered in the future.

More information can be found over at Grim & Perilious.

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[Carlsen Chris]

Hiya!

I'll be happy if it has more of a 1e flavour. I want to see nipples on my daemonettes, I want to read passages bout nergal that make me want to vomit, I want to see pictures of rats with freaking ear-rings in their ears, I want blood drinkers of khorn to be dripping in blood and guts...I want pentagrams, "dark ritual" stuff, I want to see the necromancer, elementalist and demonologist, all all that other "fluff" stuff that really set Warhammer apart from D&D and RQ. In short, I want it to have a "mature" or "restricted" rating. I want the media to be up in arms about its "obvious use of the occult, demon worship and human sacrifice". I want church ladies to faint when they see the cover. I want priests to go all wide-eyed and cross their chests while saying "In jesus name, protect me". I want it to make so many waves in the RPG industry and the media that people completely forget about D&D for a while. I want it so anti-PC that SJW's *actually* get hospitalized from reading about it. (ok...maybe not actually...but definitely have panic attacks and have to sit down).

I don't think I'll be getting that.

Warhammer: Punk and spikes. Skulls. Nudity. Blood and gore. Dirt. Grime. Disease. Irredeemable evil bad guys. Doomed world destined to loose to the hoards of Chaos. Death lurking around every corner, in every bed, in every meal, in every battle. Terror. Absolute terror of the night and the dark things that creep about.

^_^

Paul L. Ming

I'm not sure why "SJWs" would have a problem with any of that.

 

[Greg K]

I hope they at least see more of the 1st Ed titles returned to PDF format in due course.

I want them to release the pdf of the 1e rulebook on drivethru/rpgnow. They have the pdf version completed as it was available as part of the Humble Bundle, but I didn't purchase it as I had no need of the 2e material.

 

[76512390ag12]

I think this, WHFTP and AoS, have the potential to be very cool.
I suspect the 1e and 2e stuff will become avaialble as PDFs once again.. they have been on and off before..

 

[evilref]

Surely you've checked out Zweihänder, right??

Albeit not the original person replied to, checking out Zweihander and discussion about it, is precisely why I didn't buy it and why I'm looking forward to C7s official Warhammer 4e.

 

[aramis erak]

Funny, but I liked 1st Ed magic better...and the whole game in general (although I admit it is decades since I played it). I liked 2e the least and hated the magic system. So swings and roundabouts eh.

You're not the only one holding that view.

I know several who dislike 2E more than 3E...

 

[DM Howard]

You are in luck.

Thanks for the heads up!

 

[PrometheanVigil]

I hope the new 4e system brings something new to the table, because both Zweihander Grim & Perilous, and Shadows of the Demon Lord have jumped into the WHFRP void.

SOTDL is sick. It's obviously been born from the love of the opaquely bleak setting of Warhammer but with more focus on the gonzo. But what's better is that it understands the dungeon-delving tropes are more fun than being a godamm rat catcher. You can be that, if you want, although it's just a background because the meat of the system pushes fun abilities and spells and stuff to the front just like D&D. It gets the feeling across without needlessly drowning you in purposefully bad PC classes and repeated cycles of having crappy arms and armor and being perpetually poor (because ambition gets you killed in WFRP).

Hiya!

I'll be happy if it has more of a 1e flavour. I want to see nipples on my daemonettes, I want to read passages bout nergal that make me want to vomit, I want to see pictures of rats with freaking ear-rings in their ears, I want blood drinkers of khorn to be dripping in blood and guts...I want pentagrams, "dark ritual" stuff, I want to see the necromancer, elementalist and demonologist, all all that other "fluff" stuff that really set Warhammer apart from D&D and RQ. In short, I want it to have a "mature" or "restricted" rating. I want the media to be up in arms about its "obvious use of the occult, demon worship and human sacrifice". I want church ladies to faint when they see the cover. I want priests to go all wide-eyed and cross their chests while saying "In jesus name, protect me". I want it to make so many waves in the RPG industry and the media that people completely forget about D&D for a while. I want it so anti-PC that SJW's *actually* get hospitalized from reading about it. (ok...maybe not actually...but definitely have panic attacks and have to sit down).

I don't think I'll be getting that.

Warhammer: Punk and spikes. Skulls. Nudity. Blood and gore. Dirt. Grime. Disease. Irredeemable evil bad guys. Doomed world destined to loose to the hoards of Chaos. Death lurking around every corner, in every bed, in every meal, in every battle. Terror. Absolute terror of the night and the dark things that creep about.

^_^

Paul L. Ming

I don't mind Warhammer getting all stupid with the grossness but that just turns it into an asinine product for me. There's a lot (and I mean a LOT) of stupid stuff in the WHFN and WH40K universes that I gloss over or ignore entirely anytime I'm running an RPG in those settings. The books I have read that use the settings have not all been the most rarefied explorations but there have been some stories where something really decent comes along. A lot of the punk stuff isn't really, really punk as much as it's 80's satire and a very English gaze of the world. Being from England (albeit born in the 90's), I can totally identify with and feel at home some of the little cultural things peppered in through the setting. And then feel very uncomfortable flicking through something like Only War and seeing Unfortunate Implications everywhere (especially the nazi fetish uniforms and colonial attitude inherent to the setting)...

Shadows of the Demon Lord doesn't feel anything like WFRP to me, despite multiple citations. Zweihander is more of a WFRP clone, but will lose much of it's relevance if 4th Edition is good.

Cubicle 7 are normally top notch in their production standards and appreciation of subject matter, so I'm happy to wait for what they have got. It's a shame they won't redevelop The Enemy Within Campaign, as it's actually not widely available (legally anyway), and is as much a classic campaign as things like Masks of Nyarlathotep for Call of Cthulhu. I hope they at least see more of the 1st Ed titles returned to PDF format in due course.

I ended up really liking the Enemy Within WHFN novel. It was a much-needed look at the universe from the perspective of a sorcerer who's not some cackling, ugly SOB who sacrifices people to Khorne for teh lulz and pawar or whatever (I still only really know the universes from the novels, computer games and RPG books, had to parse a lot of the crap like cogitators and electoos into what they are).

Considering that 'The Enemy Within' campaign/adventure path was never properly finished, and is not available for any reasonable coin, I think there is a lot of money to be made with a reboot of that. Not a 'inspired by' like 3E's version, which was good but it wasn't TEW.

Looking forward to getting this, C7's take on LotR with TOR and AiME have been exceptionally good.

I suspect it's going to get backlash. I don't know what exactly but given the best dowsing rod for the success and approval of Warhammer stuff are from places like the RPGCodex and gamers who frequent 1d4chan, we're going to see something go down.

Just regarding the 'political' and 'dark' representation of WFRP above, I think it's a bit of a misrepresentation. It wasn't just grim dark and spikes and guts. It wasn't 'politically incorrect' (heck they detailed a 'Komission for Minority Races' in one of the city supplements).

What made it unique at the time was it's focus on unlikely, unheralded, ordinary people finding themselves in epic adventures. The conspiracies and such were occultish and had dark chaos gods and cults as antagonists, but they weren't going out of their way to make particularly offensive material, just quality stories similar to those being done in games like Call of Cthulhu and RuneQuest. There were some punkish references, like Troll Slayers with mohicans, but not to the extent that seems to be suggested here. The general tone was not dissimilar to Lord of the Rings, just advanced into later timeline-based setting (pre-Renaisaance era).

A lot Cthulhu stuff is trashy and pulpy. Wretched people going and busting up disgusting cult-y bozos in their mothers' basements or some why-the-hell-would-you-go-there cabin in the woods. I don't hold much stock in opinions that use COC as a comparative. Nothing wrong with what you've said per se; Warhammer is just plain offensive at the worst of time -- you have to really ignore the Unfortunate Implications mentioned above to enjoy the decent bits when they pop up.

Albeit not the original person replied to, checking out Zweihander and discussion about it, is precisely why I didn't buy it and why I'm looking forward to C7s official Warhammer 4e.

I saw video review of Zweihander online. The guy records himself page-turning while waxing about the game. It just looked like a heartbreaker honestly and didn't sound that great system-wise (although kudos to being able to churn out a high production values book, that speaks more than you'd think to what the guy could do if he'd just get over the "I wish I'd made Warhammer" thing like right now). Also, you can read the text as he's recording in 1080p and I totally agree with him, there's way, way too much writing for no reason (which is why the book is like 600 pages -- no actual reason, just text for text's sake).

 

[Emirikol]

We enjoyed the hell out of the 3e ENEMY WITHIN campaign. Did none of you get a chance to play it? It was system agnostic, just as Graeme Davis had planned.

We discontinued at the inter-planar stuff at the end, but got a ton of play and enjoyment.

 

[mach1.9pants]

Yes that's a great campaign, but it's The Enemy Within in name only, I still want to see a remake of the original.

 

[pogre]

I own Zweihander. It is a version of WFRP certainly, but too many fiddly home rules for me. I played a lot of 1e and really enjoyed 2e, I thought Pramas et al did a fine job. 3e was a good game, but did not capture WFRP for me. I look forward to 4e very much.

I run a WFRP campaign employing 2e rules using the 1e campaign world. I still use my old Chaos hardcovers - fun stuff!