Warhammer Fantasy/40K RPG Megathread

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Yeah, you can still grab a copy of the 1e core rulebook for under 50 on the secondary market pretty easily

Helps that it was in print for over a decade
PDF from Drivethru and Lulu's POD service is even cheaper. (I pretty much do that for all my RPGs these days).
 
I will be checking out Warlock! POD. I do love me some dark, dangerous, British Fantasy.

How easy would it be to port WFRP content to Warlock!?
 
I'm a huge fan of the system, especially combat, but only reason I'd say that it might not do well as a clone is how intimately tied to the setting most people's nostalgia is (and that recreating all those professions woud be a fair bit of work)

I would love to compile a “perfect (for me) WFRP ruleset” with bits from 1e, 2e and Zweihänder. Much as I’d also like to write my own CoC ruleset with bits from CoC6 and Mythras. But ain’t nobody got time fo’ that.

It's a very good mashup of Fighting Fantasy and WFRP. Two BOSR obsessions for the price of one! https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/312204/Warlock

Man, this looks insanely cool. Definitely picking it up.
 
I will be checking out Warlock! POD. I do love me some dark, dangerous, British Fantasy.

How easy would it be to port WFRP content to Warlock!?
You'd have to completely recreate stuff like mutant stats, but that's pretty easy to do. Settingwise I think you could run scenarios fine in it.
 
My last session of Zweihander descended into a comedy of critical failures that almost resulted in TPK. For two turns each player rolled critical failures and there were at lest 10 critical failures rolled during the rest of the game. One character left her shield stuck on a spike on the wall as she tore the straps free while trying to use it for a take down, next round she accidently ran through one of the other characters with rapier causing a grievous wound and the next round he left the rapier embedded in an overhead beam unable to recover it in the heat of battle. It was hilariously funny, but next session is all about survival.
 
My last session of Zweihander descended into a comedy of critical failures that almost resulted in TPK. For two turns each player rolled critical failures and there were at lest 10 critical failures rolled during the rest of the game. One character left her shield stuck on a spike on the wall as she tore the straps free while trying to use it for a take down, next round she accidently ran through one of the other characters with rapier causing a grievous wound and the next round he left the rapier embedded in an overhead beam unable to recover it in the heat of battle. It was hilariously funny, but next session is all about survival.
Yeah that's the problem with WFRP2 style casting, which Zweihander emulates, as did the FFG40k books. If things actually worked like that, there would be no Colleges of Magic or Temples in Fantasy and the Imperium wouldn't use any psykers at all. Too ridiculously dangerous.

Fumbles need to be 1 in 100, no more than that, especially if the results can cause the session to devolve into farce.
 
That’s the first time I have seen someone say that WFRP 2e magic is too dangerous. There is risk there but it’s pretty low in practice.

The first Mishap chart has almost nothing on it of any inconvenience, so you need to either roll the result to get to the next chart or be casting some serious magic and rolling badly in those chaos dice. Even then a good chunk of the middle Mishap aren’t too bad either.
 
Warlock! is awesome. The more I read this, the more that I read this, the more I think this would be a great OSR style solution for people who want to run a campaign based on The Witcher but find the Interlock Fantasy rules too crunchy.

Personally, I think I'd run either The Old World, the Kingdom, or possibly Mystara. I happen to quite like Mystara, as it pre-dates a lot of the baked in assumptions from DnD that I find annoying.

EDIT: Another setting that this game absolutely could do well, if you don't mind Manga, is Goblin Slayer.
 
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GURPSHammer 2.0? That one is fantastic. The perfect blend of 1e setting, including a while bunch of stuff cribbed directly from the 1e core and Enemy Within, mixed with 2e fluff. And The Oldenhaller Contract.

Is this the GURPSHammer you're referring to?​

Man, I’m really looking forward to the rest of the new Enemy Within campaign. Unfortunately, with Andy Law leaving, and all the delays, I’m skeptical that they’ll finish, which is a goddamn shame.

Damn, having him on the project was the only reason I was considering picking it up, not so much now if that's the case.​

Lizard on a stick. Vendor says as much. “Hurry, we have mouths to feed!”

Makes me think of how the play "Sweeny Todd: the Worst Pies in London Altdorf" would fit right into the WFRP setting.​
 
Aside from the core rules books, do any of you have any thoughts on the 4e releases of The Enemy Within campaign and companion books? I recently purchased the 1e PDFs, but I really dislike reading books from a screen. Just wondering how the 4e campaign and supplement compares to prior editions in terms of content and usability.
 
The Enemy Within campaign so far is mostly the same as the old with some suggestions for mixing things up at some points and some new supplementary material in the Companion books. There is not really much to say TBH and I expect that will be the case until we hit the Something in Kislev rewrite which is called the Horned Rat.
 
Aside from the core rules books, do any of you have any thoughts on the 4e releases of The Enemy Within campaign and companion books? I recently purchased the 1e PDFs, but I really dislike reading books from a screen. Just wondering how the 4e campaign and supplement compares to prior editions in terms of content and usability.
I'd recommend the 4E version over the original, at least based on the first volume. You don't lose anything, and there is useful additional content. Skywalker Skywalker says, you get information for mixing things up. This can be handy because you have players who went through an earlier edition or if something unexpected happens and you need to improvise. Graeme Davis is doing the revisions, so the additional material meshes well with the original adventure.

Hopefully they will get to the books that fix the issues with the later books in the campaign, but even they don't, I think this edition is already superior.
 
Enemy Within is a solid set of adventures, and definitely can be used as the foundation for a fun campaign. I’ve played through it once, and then run it a couple of times.

But, aside from Doomstones, I really wish a new campaign/adventure path would be released.

At this point, I just don’t think I have another run of Oldenhaller Contract or Enemy Within in me.
 
Graeme Davis is doing the revisions, so the additional material meshes well with the original adventure.

His involvement in the new versions for the campaign was the main reason I was interested in the new books, but I thought someone up thread said he's left the project already?!?
 
His involvement in the new versions for the campaign was the main reason I was interested in the new books, but I thought someone up thread said he's left the project already?!?
No, they mentioned Andy Law leaving the project.
 
I think that was Andy Law, and pretty everyone else was originally involved except Graeme Davis.
 
Did they go with the original

Karl Franz is an ineffective coward and secretly a Chaos mutant infiltrator

or the revised Warhammer Fantasy canon

Karl Franz is a shrewd and courageous leader and the hostile Elector of Stirland is the Chaos mutant plant

?
 
Did they go with the original

Karl Franz is an ineffective coward and secretly a Chaos mutant infiltrator

or the revised Warhammer Fantasy canon

Karl Franz is a shrewd and courageous leader and the hostile Elector of Stirland is the Chaos mutant plant

?
They seem to be bending the revised canon to fit their needs. "There are worrying rumors about the Emperor's health, and he hasn't been near his griffon for months."
 
The Enemy Within campaign gets the lion's share of attention when people talk about how WFRP adventures are great. Unfortunately I rarely hear about other great WFRP adventures. Are there any other must have experiences I should have on my radar? Rough Night at Three Feathers is getting some attention with the reprint. I'm not aware of any others.
 
The Enemy Within campaign gets the lion's share of attention when people talk about how WFRP adventures are great. Unfortunately I rarely hear about other great WFRP adventures. Are there any other must have experiences I should have on my radar? Rough Night at Three Feathers is getting some attention with the reprint. I'm not aware of any others.

I've run Three Feathers. It's okay as far as an adventure. At this point I'm fairly certain I own, have owned or at least I've played through everything officially published for WHFRP 1e. Enemy Within campaign (the collected campaign) stands out as the best adventure, both from writing and capturing the "Warhammer Old World" feel.

There was also a published campaign Doomstones that was okay. It takes place in the Border Princes, It's okay, but I always felt it was more of a typical D&D-esque campaign ported into WHFRP. I ran most of it for a group that had a lot of collective WHFRP experience. Some liked it, some were "meh".
 
All WFRP campaigns (as with all campaigns) have there ups and downs. However, I also had a great time with the campaigns Thousand Thrones (2e), Restless Dead (1e), Paths of the Damned (2e), and the sequel The Enemy Within (3e). I would recommend checking them out.

Doomstones (1e) and Dying of the Light (1e) need more work but are salvageable given the amount of stuff they contain.

For one shots, I highly recommend Noblesse Oblige and Dead Ringer from the Black Industries WFRP scenario design contest. The latter is my favourite WFRP scenario of all time (even as against Rough Night at the Three Feathers).
 
Worth noting that there is a literal shit-ton of fan-made stuff. Including contest winners and some adventures/campaigns that are held in very high regard. For example, the Roysten Crow adventures (a very prolific chap who penned several adventures and two campaigns), A Private War (over five hundred pages of campaign), fan magazines, sourcebooks and stuff taken from websites past and present. Why limit yourself to the "official" stuff...?
 
Worth noting that there is a literal shit-ton of fan-made stuff. Including contest winners and some adventures/campaigns that are held in very high regard. For example, the Roysten Crow adventures (a very prolific chap who penned several adventures and two campaigns), A Private War (over five hundred pages of campaign), fan magazines, sourcebooks and stuff taken from websites past and present. Why limit yourself to the "official" stuff...?

Where could someone find these fan made adventures?
 
Where could someone find these fan made adventures?


They're scattered all over. I have quite a bit I've collected and organized. I can plop it on a filesharing service and provide a link. I had to collect a lot of it via Wayback Machine. AFAIK, it's all free and legal to share. I know of a few cases where the rights may have been purchased for use in Zweihander, so I may need to omit those, as I'm no longer sure of the legality/morality of sharing them. Maybe I'll ask. But other than those few, I see no reason why sharing the others would violate any rules or laws. It's all been upped to the internet for free, by the authors. Gimme a few days, if you don't mind, it's a lot of stuff, and I'm pretty busy.

Some of it is nice-looking PDFs, some is text files only. But there is a lot of stuff. A lot of the adventures are shorter, but some are full-length.

There is a lot more fan stuff out there, professions and sourcebooks and whatnot, but I only collected the adventures.

There's also a guy who curates a large collection of fan-made stuff (wfrp.de), but he only allows access if you have written a new adventure, or can link him to one he hasn't seen. He is also surly and uncommunicative. I have tried to gain access to his trove, but have not even managed to get a response. Hell, for all I know, he is no longer active or even alive. In any event, he gatekeeps his trove well. I haven't seen it online anywhere, anyway, so he must...
 
There was also a published campaign Doomstones that was okay. It takes place in the Border Princes, It's okay, but I always felt it was more of a typical D&D-esque campaign ported into WHFRP. I ran most of it for a group that had a lot of collective WHFRP experience. Some liked it, some were "meh".
Doomstones was originally written for D&D. That came out at the late period where Games Workshop was still supporting the WFRP line but didn't want to actually put any real development effort into it.

Neon Neon To give an unconventional answer to your question, I'd suggest separating out Something Rotten in Kislev from the Enemy Within campaign. It was originally meant to be a standalone campaign within WFRP rather than part of the larger campaign. GW just wanted to get TEW over with as quickly as possible with minimal work so they made some minor changes to make it fit. It's largely reviled as an adventure because it is a terrible fit for TEW, but I can see it being a lot of fun if used alone. It's a mini-campaign where the players are sent on a series of deadly by dark humorous adventures written Ken Rolston, one of the creators of Paranoia.

The deadliness is one the reasons it doesn't work as part of TEW. Almost unavoidable TPKs aren't funny when you have just spent a year going through the previous four volumes of a campaign. It's a different story if the players signed on for that from the beginning.
 
Cubicle 7's just become the first publisher to put official content on the Foundry VTT (which has become my VTT of choice after years of Roll20 and FantasyGrounds). They've just released a bundle including their starter set, the core rules, group of five adventures, and a bunch of extras for $40.
I've never played any WFRPG. I played a lot of Fantasy Battles a long time ago, some of the Warhammer Quest boardgame, and lately I've been playing some of the Vermintide and Total War games, but for some reason have never dipped my toes into the RPG. So this is certainly a tempting entry point. Guess I need to read through the last 8 pages.
 
Cubicle 7's just become the first publisher to put official content on the Foundry VTT (which has become my VTT of choice after years of Roll20 and FantasyGrounds). They've just released a bundle including their starter set, the core rules, group of five adventures, and a bunch of extras for $40.
I've never played any WFRPG. I played a lot of Fantasy Battles a long time ago, some of the Warhammer Quest boardgame, and lately I've been playing some of the Vermintide and Total War games, but for some reason have never dipped my toes into the RPG. So this is certainly a tempting entry point. Guess I need to read through the last 8 pages.
I've never found a VTT I liked to enough to move on from just playing theater of the mind over video chat. Do you mind telling us what you like about Foundry?
 
Yeah, I guess I can try to write up a sales pitch.
For perspective, I've only run OSE and Call of Cthulhu on Foundry so far. These are both community created rulesets. They don't cost anything extra, but they're works-in-progress without any official support. Like I said, WFRPG seems to be the first official content for the system. I run my OSE games with pretty large sized dungeons where exploration is very important, but combat is theater of the mind. Call of Cthulhu is all theater of the mind.

Maps
If you're into using maps and fog of war or dynamic lighting, I don't think Roll20 or Fantasy Grounds can compare to Foundry. Foundry can handle much larger maps, higher resolution, and it's lighting tools are extremely easy to use both in prep and play. Drawing out the lines is quick and in play doors can be toggled open, closed, locked, etc with single clicks (Roll20 as a counter example, you have to switch from the token layer to the lighting layer and delete the line blocking the door, then if your players want to close that door you'd have to redraw it, real pain). Also it has a variety of "walls". Regular walls (block movement and sight), doors (states include locked, open, closed), secret doors (seem to be walls but can be locked, opened, closed), invisible walls (block movement but not sight - great for portcullises), terrain walls (block sight from certain vantages). It's all pretty great.
It also does a fog of war effect that after the players have moved through a section of the dungeon, that part of the dungeon is still visible to them, but in a grayed out fashion and without showing any tokens left there. It's pretty cool, although sometimes I'd prefer not having it so the players can still get lost.

Other Presentation Stuff
You can create playlists of any music you have locally and trigger it to play when map levels are loaded, and control the volume. You can also tie in other sound effects with proximity on the map, but that gets way too video gamey for my tastes. Sharing pictures and handouts is quite easy, including text and image views for a single handout (this is especially convenient in Call of Cthulhu when you've got a great image of a scrawled, bloody letter, but maybe the players just want something actually legible to read). You can also include secret, GM only notes on the handouts.

Organization
This is the biggest selling point for me. The journaling system, its formatting and flexible hierarchy and linking and pinning and so on, combined with local storage, makes it ideal for organizing a campaign even without the maps and automation and whatever else. Even if I were running 100% theater of the mind using just discord a/v, I'd probably put my own GM notes into Foundry over Google docs or OneNote or whatever alternative I've tried.

Automation
Speaking of automation, I guess this is the big selling point for lots of people. Foundry's got loads of community made systems, macros, add-on modules, whatever. I really haven't explored this part of it much, but even in my lightweight use-case it's better than the alternatives. Everything is pretty simple drag and drop. I'm sue someone who is into more complex stuff could sell you on this part of it more than I could, but for me it just works, whereas Roll20 and Fantasy Grounds both had their issues with any system I used for them, even with a pretty minimalist approach.

Access
Foundry is a buy once, own forever thing. I'm sick of subscriptions. If you need a server I guess you'd have to pay for that, but I've got fiber internet and haven't had any issue with a half dozen or so players connecting to my game, with high resolution (100px grids, ~80 or so square sides) maps, music playing, battles of 30+ combatants. Players do not require any Foundry account or client. They just connect to your public ip and select their player (you can provide password protection if needed). All the files are locally stored, so no worrying about cloud storage limits.


Guess that summarizes my main criteria. I could probably think of some others, but let me know if you have any questions or want to jump onto a server and try it out. I think I can just leave a game up and running and pass you the GM role if you want to play around with it.
 
Yeah, I guess I can try to write up a sales pitch.
For perspective, I've only run OSE and Call of Cthulhu on Foundry so far. These are both community created rulesets. They don't cost anything extra, but they're works-in-progress without any official support. Like I said, WFRPG seems to be the first official content for the system. I run my OSE games with pretty large sized dungeons where exploration is very important, but combat is theater of the mind. Call of Cthulhu is all theater of the mind.

Maps
If you're into using maps and fog of war or dynamic lighting, I don't think Roll20 or Fantasy Grounds can compare to Foundry. Foundry can handle much larger maps, higher resolution, and it's lighting tools are extremely easy to use both in prep and play. Drawing out the lines is quick and in play doors can be toggled open, closed, locked, etc with single clicks (Roll20 as a counter example, you have to switch from the token layer to the lighting layer and delete the line blocking the door, then if your players want to close that door you'd have to redraw it, real pain). Also it has a variety of "walls". Regular walls (block movement and sight), doors (states include locked, open, closed), secret doors (seem to be walls but can be locked, opened, closed), invisible walls (block movement but not sight - great for portcullises), terrain walls (block sight from certain vantages). It's all pretty great.
It also does a fog of war effect that after the players have moved through a section of the dungeon, that part of the dungeon is still visible to them, but in a grayed out fashion and without showing any tokens left there. It's pretty cool, although sometimes I'd prefer not having it so the players can still get lost.

Other Presentation Stuff
You can create playlists of any music you have locally and trigger it to play when map levels are loaded, and control the volume. You can also tie in other sound effects with proximity on the map, but that gets way too video gamey for my tastes. Sharing pictures and handouts is quite easy, including text and image views for a single handout (this is especially convenient in Call of Cthulhu when you've got a great image of a scrawled, bloody letter, but maybe the players just want something actually legible to read). You can also include secret, GM only notes on the handouts.

Organization
This is the biggest selling point for me. The journaling system, its formatting and flexible hierarchy and linking and pinning and so on, combined with local storage, makes it ideal for organizing a campaign even without the maps and automation and whatever else. Even if I were running 100% theater of the mind using just discord a/v, I'd probably put my own GM notes into Foundry over Google docs or OneNote or whatever alternative I've tried.

Automation
Speaking of automation, I guess this is the big selling point for lots of people. Foundry's got loads of community made systems, macros, add-on modules, whatever. I really haven't explored this part of it much, but even in my lightweight use-case it's better than the alternatives. Everything is pretty simple drag and drop. I'm sue someone who is into more complex stuff could sell you on this part of it more than I could, but for me it just works, whereas Roll20 and Fantasy Grounds both had their issues with any system I used for them, even with a pretty minimalist approach.

Access
Foundry is a buy once, own forever thing. I'm sick of subscriptions. If you need a server I guess you'd have to pay for that, but I've got fiber internet and haven't had any issue with a half dozen or so players connecting to my game, with high resolution (100px grids, ~80 or so square sides) maps, music playing, battles of 30+ combatants. Players do not require any Foundry account or client. They just connect to your public ip and select their player (you can provide password protection if needed). All the files are locally stored, so no worrying about cloud storage limits.


Guess that summarizes my main criteria. I could probably think of some others, but let me know if you have any questions or want to jump onto a server and try it out. I think I can just leave a game up and running and pass you the GM role if you want to play around with it.
Oh wow, a locally run purchased piece of software without subscription fees and cloud storage fees? Gonna have to check this out.
 
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