So... what about WFRP?

[Renshai]

Most of the critiscms posted here were fairly accurate. There were a few that were off base though.

Parts of it aren't rules light, for instance critical hits. We've imported a few rules ad-hoc from DnD, such as bull rushing. (This came in handy when my character repeatedly tried to shove another character off a ten foot drop. It worked the first time, too.)

WFRP has a combat option called Manoeuvre, that allows you to move your opponent up to 1 square a turn.

We've never had a problem quickly adjudicating critical hits. Your mileage may vary, of course. There are suggestions for running combat in a more abstract manner, and it really speeds the game up. In our campaigns (I've been running it about a year or so now), we usually have about 1, maybe 2 combats a night. That is very different from our D&D days, so we don't mind a bit of added time or complexity.

If the DM didn't houserule that we all got a free hand weapon, I would have been totally screwed despite having generally very high stats. The DM let some of us "trade" careers.

A house rule for this was not needed. Every character starts with one. (Page 20)

For such a harsh game, they really need decent parrying rules. They do have them, but in order to parry, you need:

1) A special talent (or feat-like thing) which is hard to get. One of the elves in the party has it, and it's really good.
2) A shield. This is actually hard to get early on in the game if it's not in your starting trappings. My character has a shield; it's a literal life-saver.
3) An off-hand weapon.

I think you are a little off on this one. To parry, you simply need to enter a "parrying stance". Bascially you use a half-action to assure that you get to parry an attack.

A shield isn't that hard to to get either, its about 10 gold. A character starts off with 2d10gc... with some shrewd Haggling or pooling of resources, it isn't that tough.

 

[MonsterMash]

I like WFRP 2 a lot, its pretty balanced (or at least as much as D&D 3.5 often is) and it has a very strong flavour of its setting as the rules are very tied to the overall background though they could be used in other settings. The grim and gritty bit is often overplayed as you can have other styles of game, but they are not WRFP's signature like the more brutal style.

Magic is dangerous to its users in a way that it simply isn't in most D&D campaigns and settings, interaction between PCs and NPCs tends to be more important and using monsters is much less important.

To be honest I don't see a huge need for the Old World Bestiary as it is easy to have decent adventures with nothing more than human opposition. There are some nice free downloads of scenarios at the Black Industries website - look for 'Bartok where Ogres dare', 'The Legend of Wolfgang von Horn' or anything written by Steve Darlington

 

[Keefe the Thief]

It´s nice, bad spammer reported immediately. WFRPG saved!

 

[pawsplay]

All hail WFRP! 2e forever!

 

[Wik]

Ha ha. I saw this, went "hey, a new post about WFRP!" And then realized "hey, I made this post.... um.... last year!"

 

[Oni]

Hey I just rolled up my first WFRP character ever for a PbP. To get in the spirit of things I used every random chart I could find in the book. I ended up with a 5'5" barber-surgeon with no eyebrows named Wolfgang.

There is something very liberating about randomness.

 

[jadrax]

Hey I just rolled up my first WFRP character ever for a PbP. To get in the spirit of things I used every random chart I could find in the book. I ended up with a 5'5" barber-surgeon with no eyebrows named Wolfgang.

There is something very liberating about randomness.

Indeed, liberating and awesome.