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Gotta look into WFRP1 again one of these days.

I actually like the Winds of Magic fluff, and sort of tolerate the color-coded colleges, but it does make for some embarrassing situations e.g. if you want to play an elf wizard — are you supposed to focus on one of the Winds? Submit to College authority? I never quite get the hang of it.

I think if if you play an elven wizard it's assumed that you're a novice, and that you won't learn your second Wind until several human lifetimes from now.

But it's true that the game could do with a great deal more support for playing elves in general.
 
WHRP 2e for me with 1e lore.

I really wanted to love Zweihander. But it's a bit too crunchy and the rule book is just huge. Not really the games fault. I'm just too lazy these days to read anything with too much fluff or rules.
 
How have you found the rules for Zweihander overall?

Overall the rules work well. So far nothing in the mechanics seems broken or overpowered. The only problem I have is finding specific rules due to the size of the book, or having to read a few pages before it gets to the point. I reckon you could lose a 3rd of the book/bloat without losing a single rule.
 
I'm in the minority that my preferred edition is 3rd. The narrative dice make for great visualization of the action, and the adventures are pretty fun. I did run a 2e game using the 1e setting which turned out pretty well. I'm not terribly interested in 4e.
 
I so wanted to like Zweihander. But when I finally got it, I just found it crunchy to no purpose. Like, its complicated just because it can be. And to me, that's the great shame of the game.
 
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I so wanted to like Zweihander. But when I finally got it, I just found it crunchy to no purpose. Like, its complicated just because it can be. And to me, that's the great shame of the game.

It's certainly quite a tome! I haven't run it yet, and the crunch level is considerable, but not more than Mythras as far as I can see. I like the percentile dice manipulation "tricks" that are in there, which seems to alleviate the whiff factor of linear systems. I'm kind of chomping at the bit to give it a go at some point, though my plate is quite full at the moment. Does anyone here have significant experience playing Zweihander? I'm curious as to its strngths and weaknesses at the table. I can certainly understand why it might not be to everyone's taste. :smile:
 
It's certainly quite a tome! I haven't run it yet, and the crunch level is considerable, but not more than Mythras as far as I can see. I like the percentile dice manipulation "tricks" that are in there, which seems to alleviate the whiff factor of linear systems. I'm kind of chomping at the bit to give it a go at some point, though my plate is quite full at the moment. Does anyone here have significant experience playing Zweihander? I'm curious as to its strngths and weaknesses at the table. I can certainly understand why it might not be to everyone's taste. :smile:
I'll hold my hand up and admit I've not played it. I'd say it's biggest weakness is, it isn't the retroclone of Warhammer 1e that I was thinking it was going to be. Sadly, I'm still waiting for that particular game, with the Skills list cleaned up so that those that give a bonus are separated from those that give an ability. Which should probably be a new category.

As for strengths, I didn't really find any, as I got bored part way through making a character.
 
the crunch level is considerable, but not more than Mythras as far as I can see


The difference I found is that all of Mythras's crunch adds to the gameplay. Essentially, ou get out of Mythras what you put into it - the crunch is purposeful and delivers tangible benefits in gameplay.

Zweihander, OTOH... well, I'll just quote a small portion from very extensive review...


...But, hey, let's check out Zweihander's Sanity system. I mean, WFRP basically just had a simplified version of Call of Cthulhu's system so it'd be hard to do worse.

Zweihander divides Madness into that caused by stress, fear, or terror, with copious examples of each tier. In each case, a character exposed to the stimuli must make a Resolve Test. The results then range from gaining a Fortune Point (how many goddamn point pools does this game need?)

...for a Critical Success, to gaining a ton of Corruption and paralysis for a Critical Failure. Luckily the next section is an in-depth looK at Corruption. Causes of Corruption ("Offenses") are divided into Minor, Middling, and Major (Daniel does love his tryptics). Accumulated Corruption increases a character's Chaos rank. This is balanced by a character's Order rank sort of like a Pendragon Passion. High ranking in Order gains a character Fate points. Higher ranking in Chaos gains you a Disorder. An extensive list of disorders follows.

While these are flavourful in and of themselves (overall, flavour-filled lists seem to be Zweihander's strongest points), I have to admit I was wrong.

This is way worse than WFRP's simplistic system.

It is just downright Byzantine. This mechanic is converted into that mechanic, is converted into that track, leads to this, ad nauseam. This isn't crunch so much as ring around the rosy.
 
I've run a few months' worth of Zweihänder. It's a good system, and works very well. I dont have a lot of experience with WFRP, so I can't really compare the two in great detail.

It works very well, is balanced (sure, I can live without "balance", and some people don't like it, but for me it makes a game easier to run and less work as a GM) nicely, and plays smoothly. I dont like thick or crunchy games as a rule, and I liked it. The biggest issue I had was that until players internalize weapon qualities/special abilities/etc., it slows down play a bit.

The book itself is big, but quite inclusive. Most of what is in it is "optional", and need not be referenced during play.

It is overwritten and muddled in places, for sure. I put this down to Fox being a first time writer, and being too attached to material to objectively decide what should go and what should stay.

The balance can make things a bit "samey"

I like the structure of WFRP's career system a bit better, and think that the Zweihänder career system was more designed to avoid IP infringement than anything. There are a few areas like that in Zweihänder, where it seems like a different path would have been preferable but not ideal from a legal standpoint. You can almost see that when it happens.

Overall, however, I find Zweihänder to be complete, easy to run, and fun. It's not for high fantasy, obviously.

The book itself can usually be had for less than 40 bucks, and considering its quality, attractiveness and completeness, I'd say it's well worth it. YMMV.

I have converted some WFRP 2e scenarios, and it's gone well, and wasn't too difficult.

Overall, I like it. I will play it again. Others with more WFRP experience might like that game better. And a lot of people just don't like the author, which is a whole different ball of wax.
 
The difference I found is that all of Mythras's crunch adds to the gameplay. Essentially, ou get out of Mythras what you put into it - the crunch is purposeful and delivers tangible benefits in gameplay.

Zweihander, OTOH... well, I'll just quote a small portion from very extensive review...


...But, hey, let's check out Zweihander's Sanity system. I mean, WFRP basically just had a simplified version of Call of Cthulhu's system so it'd be hard to do worse.

Zweihander divides Madness into that caused by stress, fear, or terror, with copious examples of each tier. In each case, a character exposed to the stimuli must make a Resolve Test. The results then range from gaining a Fortune Point (how many goddamn point pools does this game need?)

...for a Critical Success, to gaining a ton of Corruption and paralysis for a Critical Failure. Luckily the next section is an in-depth looK at Corruption. Causes of Corruption ("Offenses") are divided into Minor, Middling, and Major (Daniel does love his tryptics). Accumulated Corruption increases a character's Chaos rank. This is balanced by a character's Order rank sort of like a Pendragon Passion. High ranking in Order gains a character Fate points. Higher ranking in Chaos gains you a Disorder. An extensive list of disorders follows.

While these are flavourful in and of themselves (overall, flavour-filled lists seem to be Zweihander's strongest points), I have to admit I was wrong.

This is way worse than WFRP's simplistic system.

It is just downright Byzantine. This mechanic is converted into that mechanic, is converted into that track, leads to this, ad nauseam. This isn't crunch so much as ring around the rosy.


Yeah, I did end up ignoring a lot of that stuff in my Zweihänder games, basically just using corruption when characters got injured or acted despicably. So, yeah there is some needless complication, but the core system is very simple, and the game's balance and modular design makes it really easy to strip stuff off/bolt it on without breaking anything.

Edit: for sure, I used the WFRP fluff with my games...
 
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I'll hold my hand up and admit I've not played it. I'd say it's biggest weakness is, it isn't the retroclone of Warhammer 1e that I was thinking it was going to be. Sadly, I'm still waiting for that particular game, with the Skills list cleaned up so that those that give a bonus are separated from those that give an ability. Which should probably be a new category.

Isn't that pretty much 2e? Skills became Skills (add a bonus) and Talents (added an ability).
 
It's certainly quite a tome! I haven't run it yet, and the crunch level is considerable, but not more than Mythras as far as I can see. I like the percentile dice manipulation "tricks" that are in there, which seems to alleviate the whiff factor of linear systems. I'm kind of chomping at the bit to give it a go at some point, though my plate is quite full at the moment. Does anyone here have significant experience playing Zweihander? I'm curious as to its strngths and weaknesses at the table. I can certainly understand why it might not be to everyone's taste. :smile:

The rules themselves work fine. As other's have said, they appear well balanced. Having said that. I've never had to use misfortune dice on my Player Characters, they tend to find their own misfortune :grin: I gave up tracking corruption. For some reason I can't keep the rules in my head and needed to constantly look it up, which isn't an easy task. Even the PDF is difficult to search for stuff as its so vast.

When comparing it to Mythras (which I haven't finished reading yet). Mythras has comparable crunch, but its neatly written on about a third of the page count and much more accessible. I don't find that Zweihander is badly written, its just over written. Granted, some folk might consider that to be the same thing. Here is an example of what I'm talking about for those who haven't read the book.

Basic Tier: Your new profession has several skills tied to it. You must spend Reward Points to purchases all ten of these skills.......
Intermediate Tier: Your new profession has several skills tied to it. You must spend Reward Points to purchases all ten of these skills......
Advanced Tier: Your new profession has several skills tied to it. You must spend Reward Points to purchases all ten of these skills......

Each of these text blocks run to hundreds of words each with just minor variations, if at all. Each time you have to re-read identical text to get to that little nugget of information you are looking for. This kind of thing can be found throughout the book and it really makes finding stuff during game play difficult. So in just a few pages you have hundreds of words that just repeat. A change of structure could cut several pages to a half page.

We have had a few other issues with the game, but I can't pin those on Zweihander. One of my players had never encountered a roll under system before and it took several sessions for him to get the hang of it. He just found it very unintuitive to begin with. Another player had issues getting his head around how damage worked. I took him a while to grasp that it wasn't the actual weapon that made the difference, but the weapons traits.
 
Did you play Zweihander original or the revised version Gringnr Gringnr and Winterblight Winterblight ?

I'm playing the original (one kind individual on this forum gifted it to me). Having said that, one of my players is using the revised version. I haven't noticed much difference between them. Though I would expect the errata has been included in the revised edition. The paper in the revised edition appears to be thinner, shaving a third off the bulk, but other than that, I don't know there is much difference?
 
I got the WFRP Bundle and love the adventures and 1e seems solid with some nifty ideas (like flipping your roll to determine hit location) but the magic system is a bit too drab D&D for me. I've got 4e which also has some nice touches but seems a bit too fiddly, may run with that but have to decide what to drop by the wayside. Or maybe just try and run with Small But Vicious Dog (see below).

As usual for any WFRP thread I'll also use this opportunity to plug Small But Vicious Dog a B/X and WFRP mashup and this supercool conversion of TSR UK's masterpiece Night's Dark Terror for WFRP.
 
I got the WFRP Bundle and love the adventures and 1e seems solid with some nifty ideas (like flipping your roll to determine hit location) but the magic system is a bit too drab D&D for me. I've got 4e which also has some nice touches but seems a bit too fiddly, may run with that but have to decide what to drop by the wayside. Or maybe just try and run with Small But Vicious Dog (see below).

As usual for any WFRP thread I'll also use this opportunity to plug Small But Vicious Dog a B/X and WFRP mashup and this supercool conversion of TSR UK's masterpiece Night's Dark Terror for WFRP.

There's also French WFRP clones, Brygandine. Not available in English, but translating software will render usable, if inelegant, results. Brygandine is a bit lighter than any WFRP I've seen. All the rolls are player facing. It has the same "vibe", though.
 
I never played 2e. Book bloat and not seeing any actual reason to put down the entire game in a single volume that is 1e.

The WFRP 2e rulebook is pretty complete by itself at 256 pages. The structure of the book follows 1e’s closely. It’s a lighter on setting and the bestiary than the 1e rulebook but that’s more a testament to the size of those sections in 1e than a lack in 2e.

It does have the best supplement support of any WFRP edition but I wouldn’t take the impression from that as that makes the rulebook somehow less complete.
 
The WFRP 2e rulebook is pretty complete by itself at 256 pages. The structure of the book follows 1e’s closely. It’s a lighter on setting and the bestiary than the 1e rulebook but that’s more a testament to the size of those sections in 1e than a lack in 2e.

It does have the best supplement support of any WFRP edition but I wouldn’t take the impression from that as that makes the rulebook somehow less complete.
It's a purely personal thing. It doesn't feel as complete to me, so I never bothered getting past skimming the book.
 
Cool. I generally think of WFRP2e's rulebook as one of the best ones in the hobby in balancing content with playability. But you are entitled to you own opinion. Its just a shame though as it sounded like what you were looking for.
 
The WFRP 2e rulebook is pretty complete by itself at 256 pages. The structure of the book follows 1e’s closely. It’s a lighter on setting and the bestiary than the 1e rulebook but that’s more a testament to the size of those sections in 1e than a lack in 2e.
I'd also say that while the WFRP 1E was a complete game in a single book from a rules perspective, a lot of the setting was presented in the overview of The Empire in the first volume of The Enemy Within. Without that book, you wouldn't even know what the Cult of Sigmar is.
 
I'd also say that while the WFRP 1E was a complete game in a single book from a rules perspective, a lot of the setting was presented in the overview of The Empire in the first volume of The Enemy Within. Without that book, you wouldn't even know what the Cult of Sigmar is.
Good point. It really seems like the 38 pages of Empire info that preface The Enemy Within Campaign should be in the main book, and probably were supposed to be, but cut for size reasons. If you had no idea what Warhammer was, and just picked up WFRP1 because of the amazingly awesome cover, you'd be losing out not having The Enemy Within or Warhammer Campaign.
 
I've looked at every system since (2e, 3e, 4e, and Zweihander), and I've yet to see a compelling reason to switch from using 1E rules.
I own but haven't played 4e, but 1e and 3e would be the ones I'd choose - I like the vaguely hinged weirdness of 1e, and didn't really like the more thought-out and organised WHFB6e-era version of the setting. 3e, as maligned as it was, at least tried something different with it's mechanics.
 
Good point. It really seems like the 38 pages of Empire info that preface The Enemy Within Campaign should be in the main book, and probably were supposed to be, but cut for size reasons. If you had no idea what Warhammer was, and just picked up WFRP1 because of the amazingly awesome cover, you'd be losing out not having The Enemy Within or Warhammer Campaign.
Enemy Within, Shadows over Bogenhafen and Death on the Reik, along with the core book, make for the most incredible and perfectly described setting ever.

Seriously, the big picture of the core book, the colour of EW, the city from SoB and the trading system plus the river network of DotR.

Change my mind.
 
Good point. It really seems like the 38 pages of Empire info that preface The Enemy Within Campaign should be in the main book, and probably were supposed to be, but cut for size reasons. If you had no idea what Warhammer was, and just picked up WFRP1 because of the amazingly awesome cover, you'd be losing out not having The Enemy Within or Warhammer Campaign.


At that point they were making up the setting as they went along.But it's not like you need to know the inner workings of social life in Minis Tirith to play a game in Middle Earth. For the first ten years playing the game, we never used anything besides the core rulebook. It was self-contained enough, and provided enough info to capture the flavour of the world without the necessity of adhering to what would later become the "Canon" of The Old World.
 
I own but haven't played 4e, but 1e and 3e would be the ones I'd choose - I like the vaguely hinged weirdness of 1e, and didn't really like the more thought-out and organised WHFB6e-era version of the setting. 3e, as maligned as it was, at least tried something different with it's mechanics.


I wasn't one of the big detractors of 3rd - in fact, I recall quite a bit of defending it back in the day on The Site where quite a few people who never even saw the product in person were dismissing it as a board game masquerading as an RPG. But having given it a good run on the game table, ultimately I just didn't find that the system really made me happy. Even divorced of the widgets, the die rolls tended to be more annoying than helpful.
 
I wasn't one of the big detractors of 3rd - in fact, I recall quite a bit of defending it back in the day on The Site where quite a few people who never even saw the product in person were dismissing it as a board game masquerading as an RPG. But having given it a good run on the game table, ultimately I just didn't find that the system really made me happy. Even divorced of the widgets, the die rolls tended to be more annoying than helpful.
Heh, you and I got into it quite a bit as I recall. IIRC, a lot of the excessively narrative aspect of the system your GM wasn’t using.
WFRP3 had so many cool mechanics in the various classes. Unfortunately, the core mechanics of the game ended up being worthless.
 
I wasn't one of the big detractors of 3rd - in fact, I recall quite a bit of defending it back in the day on The Site where quite a few people who never even saw the product in person were dismissing it as a board game masquerading as an RPG. But having given it a good run on the game table, ultimately I just didn't find that the system really made me happy. Even divorced of the widgets, the die rolls tended to be more annoying than helpful.
No, you're right; even in my limited experience I could see flaws. But I respected the ambition behind it and the things they were trying, even if they didn't pay off.
 
Seem to me if we smashed 1st and 2nd together we'd have the perfect iteration. And yet...

That's what I was hoping C7 would do. They just added a little too much. One of the reasons that 2e was such a goldie locks game was it had 'just the right crunch'. But I guess it was inevitable, that a new license, a company would 'add' to the mechanics to in order to make it their own. Don't get me wrong it's a good effort but I'd still play 2e or 1e before that version.
 
I would say that Zweihander has more crunch but its crunch is pretty solid. WFRP4e's has a layer of fiddliness but its not all that solid and feels more bolted on with little benefit.
 
I would say that Zweihander has more crunch but its crunch is pretty solid. WFRP4e's has a layer of fiddliness but its not all that solid and feels more bolted on with little benefit.

That sounds about right to my recollection also. Zweihander is pretty robust as a system. Where as WFRP 4e feels a bit more arbitrary. I'm still confused why the added in the extra attributes. There was no real need for the manual dexterity thingey.
 
I am also confused by where 4e ended up. As you say, it seemed like a pretty simple brief to get it right given the prevalent view that 1e setting + 2e rules was a preference for a vast majority of the fanbase - fix the whiff, open up careers, and add more 1e tone to setting. However, the design process seems to have gone to their heads and resulted in a lot of loose ends that don't really go anywhere.

In comparison, Zweihander may be crunchy but it clear that its as crunchy as the designer intended and the crunch is well thought out and with purpose.
 
Seem to me if we smashed 1st and 2nd together we'd have the perfect iteration. And yet...


Well, here's my feelings on that.

I know these aren't widely shared opinions, so this is just my PoV, and I'm fine with being a minority in taste.

From what I understand of 2nd ed it has a fundamentally different design philosophy from 1st. Alot of this centres around the careers, and it's something perpetuated in Zweihander.

First edition is an "old school" game, and by that I mean character creation largely relies upon random rolls. You, as the player, are tasked with making the best of what fate hands you. Things in the game are not "balanced" - what accessions the game makes towards the concept of balance is that everyone is essentially giving the same chances, and everyone is stuck with what fate - the roll of the dice-delivers.

Moreover, it was clearly the intention in first edition that the careers were not equivalent to "levels". You didn't simply move from one career to another along a path, what you did was intended to line up with the events in the game. This may mean, not progressing for long periods of time, or rapidly progressing in a short period, depending on what was going on in the campaign. You never simply "leveled up" - if you wanted to start in a new career, you needed to go out in the world and make that happen - gather supplies, find a teacher/someone to hire you etc, sometimes involve yourself in a long and grueling, sometimes pointless, apprentieship. All of this was a part of your character's story (no, I'm not using that in the narrative gaming sense, I mean literally the life of the character in the Old World). "Career Exits" were easy paths - you could move up from being an outlaw to an outlaw chief, but this certainly wasn't the only, or even expected, course of events. Many times if you wanted to go in a different direction in life, you either would have to start over with another basic career as the opportunity presented itself, or you were thrust into by events outside your control (not many people would chose to be a beggar).

This approach to the game, IMO, is what gave it a lot of it's flavour. It's also the part that over the years, I've seen to be the most mis-understood and mis-handled, and thus, the most complaigned about.

And so second edition attempted to "fix" this, meaning ignore the intentions of first edition and instead cater to the prevalent misperceptions, and treat careers instead like a combination of classes and levels that you moved through in a linear fashion, one career's exits leading to the next. And to make this "fair", the careers were balanced against each other.

The thing is, I think it's one or the other - you go random, and the balance is that everyone rolls the dice and everyone is given the same chances to succeed or not, or you make the outcomes balanced, in which case random rolling becomes pointless. And this is taken even further in Zweihander, which "improved" on the concepts of 2E by making the careers even MORE balanced, meaning it's even more pointless to roll, because the difference in outcomes is little more than window-dressing.

To put it another way, if a situation in a game had the outcome - succeed in one way, succeed in another way, or succeed in a third way - there would be no point in rolling, would there? You'd just simply say to the player, any of these methods would work, pick whichever you like. So why is it acceptable in character creation, beyond just a legacy mechanic harkening back to a time when the game was a different game?

Anyways, I also find that 1E had a fantastically streamlined combat system - one of the best ever in RPGs, IMO, and every attempt to improve that has just made it clunkier, slower, and more complicated without adding any meaningful benefit.

I guess that's my grognardian rant for the day, but that's mainly why I've stuck with and continue to stick with 1E - because most of the things people interpret as "bugs" in the game I see as features.

Join me next time when I explain why there's nothing wrong with the armour rules in FASERIP, and you're a bad person for wanting to change them.
 
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https://discord.gg/nm4WqRc there has been a fan effort to do a Mythras version of Warhammer, and we set up a special channel for it. Dan True on the TDM boards has been looking at porting the magic system. careers have been discussed in the channel at length

Considering what Dan did with Eberron, this has some potential.
 
I am also confused by where 4e ended up. As you say, it seemed like a pretty simple brief to get it right given the prevalent view that 1e setting + 2e rules was a preference for a vast majority of the fanbase - fix the whiff, open up careers, and add more 1e tone to setting. However, the design process seems to have gone to their heads and resulted in a lot of loose ends that don't really go anywhere.

In comparison, Zweihander may be crunchy but it clear that its as crunchy as the designer intended and the crunch is well thought out and with purpose.


Yeah very true... Zweihander had a clear design goal, and it worked. Even if it's a little crunchy for me. He also nailed the tone. I wish he'd release a light version! :smile:

And your're spot on about WFRP4e. I mean, the design brief on paper seemed rather simple. Plus, the fans had set out exactly what they wanted when asked on the big purple. They were dying for feedback... Just seemed to jet over their heads, alas. :sad:

I think you're right about 'ego' and probably a case of too many cooks as well. Fingers crossed for 5th e!! ;)
 
Well, here's my feelings on that

I guess that's my grognardian rant for the day, but that's mainly why I've stuck with and continue to stick with 1E - because most of the things people interpret as "bugs" in the game I see as features.

Sums up my feelings as well tbh...

Actually, I think you assessment is spot on about the careers being more mechanical in the 2e and beyond. And as you say, 1e is a delightfully quirky game which was what made it great in a way, 'warts and all'.

While I think 2e is more 'complete' from the mechanics perspective, the elegantly simple 1e is still great. I'd be just as happy playing that as well, in all honesty. And I never really recovered from the loss of the initiative stat. I was gutted that 2e removed it (as we used it for everything). But even when 4e put it back in, it was already starting to feel bloated. So it didn't really matter to me at that stage. Ah well...
 
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