Warhammer Fantasy/40K RPG Megathread

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Christ Dude, it’s not even close.
Well, I've got WFRP 1&2, but honestly, they don't look that different to me mechanics-wise. Then again, maybe I'm missing something because I've mostly stuck to 2e due to the rules being cleaned-up and easier to reference.
Care to point anything in particular that I'm missing:grin:?

Indeed. Balance requires design, and WFRP1e doesn't seem so much designed as thrown together and accidentally happening to work. It's glorious chaos.
That sounds heretical:shade:.
 
Indeed. Balance requires design, and WFRP1e doesn't seem so much designed as thrown together and accidentally happening to work. It's glorious chaos.
WFRPG 1e is literally a war game with a skill system. And a sort of class system, plus a few bits nicked from popular games of the day. And yet, it doesn’t just work, it works gloriously. A perfect blend of setting and system.

It makes me wonder if Doomstones could be ran as a forum game.
 
WFRPG 1e is literally a war game with a skill system. And a sort of class system, plus a few bits nicked from popular games of the day. And yet, it doesn’t just work, it works gloriously. A perfect blend of setting and system.

It makes me wonder if Doomstones could be ran as a forum game.
Well, Warhammer also became popular due to a wargame, didn't it?
 
Funny, I can swear I've seen people playing it...:shock:
I've seen people playing many games that are out of print.

"Games Workshop made the decision to refocus its business. It had found that the miniatures business was much more profitable than pure publishing; WFRP sold very few miniatures, and adding WFRP material to WFB and Warhammer 40,000 supplements had done little to boost the sales of those products."

It needs a citation, but at the same time as WHFRP was cancelled, GW cancelled reprints of Call of Cthulhu, Stormbringer and RuneQuest 3e. As well cancelling as their own Judge Dredd RPG. Not to mention cancelling minis lines for the Star Trek Tactical Combat Simulator, Doctor Who and such 2000AD tie ins as Rogue Trooper.

Basically, they decided that Warhammer Fantasy Battle and 40k were where the money was.

Which has proved to be a sound business decision, even if the RPG market has suffered from their absence. Which is in itself, a subject for debate.

 
Which has proved to be a sound business decision, even if the RPG market has suffered from their absence. Which is in itself, a subject for debate.

I'm not sure it has suffered. The universes they created (Warhammer, 40k, Sigmar) have the right "IT" factor to pull in a fanbase (People wanted a 40k RPG for decades), they're incredibly accessible - there are so many entry points beyond just the tabletop games - and they also have a high street store in almost every city of note in the UK (Which, sure, is a business decision, but you don't get to that status by selling reprints of other people's RPG books). They don't discuss the roleplaying side themselves much, but if you're in a game group it doesn't take long before someone hears about roleplaying and decides to try it. If you're a child in the UK, you get exposed to something Warhammer eventually.
 
I'm not sure it has suffered. The universes they created (Warhammer, 40k, Sigmar) have the right "IT" factor to pull in a fanbase (People wanted a 40k RPG for decades), they're incredibly accessible - there are so many entry points beyond just the tabletop games - and they also have a high street store in almost every city of note in the UK (Which, sure, is a business decision, but you don't get to that status by selling reprints of other people's RPG books). They don't discuss the roleplaying side themselves much, but if you're in a game group it doesn't take long before someone hears about roleplaying and decides to try it. If you're a child in the UK, you get exposed to something Warhammer eventually.
To the point where I've heard Warhammer named as The British Hobby.
 
I think GW have a history of just throwing around the phrase "role-playing" wherever they feel like it. Epic : Space Marine was described as "3D role playing" on the box, Inquisitor billed itself as a role-playing skirmish game because you needed a moderator, Warhammer Quest and Necromunda had "roleplaying books" with their campaign system in, etc.
 
Well, Warhammer Fantasy started as a hybrid - it wasn't completely an RPG, but it did make use of character creation, the game was run by a GM, and it had narrative modules - quite different from the tournament battle game it became with 4th edition. Of course, this was the same era that RPGs were still calling themselves wargames, so it's kinda six of one, half a dozen of the other.

It was third edition that it actually split into the Fantasy Battle Game and the Role-Playing Game.
 
Funny, I can swear I've seen people playing it...:shock:

Do you mean the wargame or the RPG?

After GW dropped it's role-playing division to devote it's attention to it's proprietary retail stores and refocus it's target demographic to upper middle class young adolescents, the license for the RPG was taken up by Hogshead publishing, who from 1994 to 2003 keptthe game in print and released a number of supplements, although GW retained editorial control over content. So, for a game whose life was over a decade, its not suprising it continues to be played and still has fans to this day.

The wargame...it's a bit more complicated. Warhammer Fantasy Battle was officially replaced by Warhammer: Age of Sigmar a few years back. AoS is also a fantasy miniature wargame, that makes use of the same IP, and is positioned as a continuuation of the fluff of Warhammer Fantasy. The Old World setting of the original game was officially ended with 8th edition in an extended event called "The End Times", which concluded with the world getting blowed up.

Age of Sigmar began shortly thereafter, with the premise that Sigmar, the living god of the Empire from the Old World, survived the explosion by clinging to an asteroid. Then he floated through the cosmos until he met a space dragon, and the two became BFFs' and the dragon taught him magic to create a new setting and bring back his old friends from the old world, but everybody now is "MORE XXX_TREME!!!" (like Doritoes), and they added Space Marines to the fantasy game.



While WFB was a complex strategy battle game with rankle and file troops, AoS is a mass-battle skirmish game.

Needless to say, the fans were mostly not thrilled with this development, and there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth.




But, towards the end of last year GW made the announcement that The Old World is returning, so...there's that (in that's a whole new can o' worms)
 
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Indeed. Balance requires design, and WFRP1e doesn't seem so much designed as thrown together and accidentally happening to work. It's glorious chaos.
It really is fun getting a group together and making up characters. Trying to get a Wizard’s Apprentice and rolling Merchant... The whole group cheering when someone gets a Pit Fighter... Good times.
 
Out of curiosity: would you say It's still worth running Enemy Within using 1e?
I played quite a bit of the second edition and a bit of the fourth, liked them a lot too but life took me on other direction. Yet I always think of the Enemy Within as this unfinished job... maybe I should revisit the Old World again when I have the time.
 
Do you mean the wargame or the RPG?
I meant the wargame. I've never seen anyone using miniatures for the RPG, and I've seen more sessions of that, probably due to my own biases.
 
I meant the wargame. I've never seen anyone using miniatures for the RPG, and I've seen more sessions of that, probably due to my own biases.
In 1st edition WFRP, the rules assumed you were using minis, with the combat chapter using diagrams to illustrate their use,
 
In 1st edition WFRP, the rules assumed you were using minis, with the combat chapter using diagrams to illustrate their use,
I used minis from time to time with 1e. Thanks to Heroquest, Blood Boowl and a set of dungeon geomorphs. Ahh, the fun when the lone necromancer gets confronted, only to cast his summon spell and a dozen skellingtons get plonked on the table.

It's a shame those board games got left in the divan draw when we got a new bed. Teach me to look before I let them take the thing!
 
Many of our Warhammer RPG campaigns culminated in massive battles that sometimes took several sessions to play out. Hell, they sometimes took more than one session to set out all the units, sometimes we had many hundreds of minis on the board at one time and many more lurking just off it as reinforcements.
 
Many of our Warhammer RPG campaigns culminated in massive battles that sometimes took several sessions to play out. Hell, they sometimes took more than one session to set out all the units, sometimes we had many hundreds of minis on the board at one time and many more lurking just off it as reinforcements.
Did you stick with the WFRP combat system or did you switch to WFB?

I think the biggest fights we had in WFRP were when I ran Lichemaster. We laid out the town of Frugelhofen And Maisontaal on a ping-pong table using the cardstock houses that came with the WFB boxed set. Lots and lots and lots of skeletons.
 
I've seen people playing many games that are out of print.

"Games Workshop made the decision to refocus its business. It had found that the miniatures business was much more profitable than pure publishing; WFRP sold very few miniatures, and adding WFRP material to WFB and Warhammer 40,000 supplements had done little to boost the sales of those products."

It needs a citation, but at the same time as WHFRP was cancelled, GW cancelled reprints of Call of Cthulhu, Stormbringer and RuneQuest 3e. As well cancelling as their own Judge Dredd RPG. Not to mention cancelling minis lines for the Star Trek Tactical Combat Simulator, Doctor Who and such 2000AD tie ins as Rogue Trooper.

Basically, they decided that Warhammer Fantasy Battle and 40k were where the money was.

Which has proved to be a sound business decision, even if the RPG market has suffered from their absence. Which is in itself, a subject for debate.


If I remember right a lot of the business background is discussed on the Grognard Files with Mike Brunton.

 
Did you stick with the WFRP combat system or did you switch to WFB?

I think the biggest fights we had in WFRP were when I ran Lichemaster. We laid out the town of Frugelhofen And Maisontaal on a ping-pong table using the cardstock houses that came with the WFB boxed set. Lots and lots and lots of skeletons.

We switched to WFB for the big set pieces. I "think" we were playing the Hogshead version of WFRP and one of the older versions of the WFB - I know all the armies where in one book rather than each having a book to themselves. I don't remember the process exactly for converting the characters to WFB, but I think our current fate points became our total wounds. I was a player, so I don't remember all the details.
 
We switched to WFB for the big set pieces. I "think" we were playing the Hogshead version of WFRP and one of the older versions of the WFB - I know all the armies where in one book rather than each having a book to themselves. I don't remember the process exactly for converting the characters to WFB, but I think our current fate points became our total wounds. I was a player, so I don't remember all the details.

Sounds like 3rd ed, which makes sense - the two systems were designed to be compatible, and shared several sourceooks
 
In 1st edition WFRP, the rules assumed you were using minis, with the combat chapter using diagrams to illustrate their use,

It also flavoured much of the magic. I remember there being a high level spell called Invisible Bridge that seemed to be almost entirely aimed at mass combat.
 
It also flavoured much of the magic. I remember there being a high level spell called Invisible Bridge that seemed to be almost entirely aimed at mass combat.
Most of the direct damage spells attack a random number of minis/targets. And the Summonners of various types can call up LARGE numbers of things. MInis are a part of it, for sure.
 
I really, really want to run a Zweihander campaign based on Warhammer Fantasy post Storm of Chaos. I happen to really like Zweihander. To me it's the true successor to Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay and leagues better than WHFRP 4th edition in my opinion. Zweihander being a Retroclone frees it from tradition and allows so many Quality of Life improvements over WHFRP, in particular ditching the Wounds system from 2nd edition on which can lead to Hit Point Bloat. I might even keep Zweihander's spin on classic Warhammer baddies like the Orc spores creating new orc by infecting humans.

I'm tempted to try to run Thousand Thrones, but from what I've heard Enemy Within is also pretty awesome to.
 
What I'd really like to see from Zweihander is a new campaign setting entirely. I think there's a lot that could be done there.

I absolutely agree. I really want to see the implied campaign setting fleshed out more. Daniel clearly has some ideas for this world which seems to be a hybrid of the Warhammer Fantasy Old World we all know and love with the Continent of Andzrej Sapkowski's Witcher.
 
huh...I actually have a setting that would probably fit Zweilhander well. Not much of an elves and dwarves thing but the tone and general technology would fit. Well, The Crucible and the Chalice has age of reason technology with vampires as an oppressed migrant minority, and talking bears, really. It'd probably need some elements toned down as I wrote it as a setting that you couldn't discuss on rpg.net without getting banned. So, it's got some problematic stuff, but that's what makes it so dark, so you'd probably want to leave some parts of it implied but open to speculation.
 
I absolutely agree. I really want to see the implied campaign setting fleshed out more. Daniel clearly has some ideas for this world which seems to be a hybrid of the Warhammer Fantasy Old World we all know and love with the Continent of Andzrej Sapkowski's Witcher as well as some really unique original ideas.

I also love how Zweihander isn't afraid to go full bore into the really fucked up sexual horror elements that existed in earlier editions of Warhammer. Warhammer has always had a heavy influence from Heavy Metal culture and heavy metal has always been about being transgressive.
 
I really want to see Colonial Gothic, Peacemaker, and Tetsubo for Zweihander to be released. Seeing the WFRP ruleset applies to westerns and samurai stories would be so good.

And Dark Astral as a full book too.
 
I heard about the original authors dropping out. They are still looking to develop an RPG in that era though.
 
I absolutely love the WFRP 1e setting. It's the first 'world' I grew up with (well, maybe Allansia and Sommerlund but they were quite fragmented), and it fits a lot of my preferences for down to earth gaming.

As 2e came out I was out of the hobby, having moved away from my diehard Warhammer friends, so it completely passed me by. The whole Storm of Chaos was a tragedy in my eyes, add in an anachronistic Bretonnia and 2e is not something I've ever felt like picking up.

I've also not picked up Zweihander because as I've got older I've moved away from heavier systems generally, and although I could easily see myself in a WFRP campaign again I don't think I'd use any of these.

I'd actually use Advanced HeroQuest. This is a generally unheard of gem (IMO), the 'big brother' of Hasbro/GWs HeroQuest, it was an attempt to create a WFB/WFRP/boardgame hybrid. What it did was take the attribute array of WFB/WFRP(ish) and a d12 and make a game out of them. It truly is WFRP-light.

It did have some innovations, an opposed melee system in particular, whereby equally matched opponents had a 50/50 chance of each other, whether they were both super skilled or super inept. It also had some problems, Damage Dice were a bit clunky, and it WAS designed as a boardgame, so is easily dismissed as one, but one look at the character sheet easily identifies it as a WFB/WFRP 'clone'. All it really missed was the career system & Fellowship (which is quite a big miss, but you could add those elements back in easily).

Magic was based on the College system, but it was simple, and I never had a magic user in any WFRP campaign I was in, so it wasn't a miss in eyes.
 
I also love how Zweihander isn't afraid to go full bore into the really fucked up sexual horror elements that existed in earlier editions of Warhammer. Warhammer has always had a heavy influence from Heavy Metal culture and heavy metal has always been about being transgressive.
I'm kinda bored how Slaanesh just goes for "BDSM" all the time when Gluttony, Greed, and Sloth aren't really touched on (Khorne does Wrath, Tzeentch does Envy, Nurgle does his own thing, and they all hit on Pride in different ways). Gluttony in particular is something that probably has a lot of potential for daemons, or daemons which steal bits of you as you fight them, and a Slaaneshi assassin who will only make the perfect kill sounds like a fun adversary, as two ideas from the top of my head.

Admittedly, I think making a wargame unit based around Sloth would be difficult (An aura debuff effect on the enemy, which they can solve using violence at the cost of the effect temporarily increasing?) but the rest could be done.
 
I'm kinda bored how Slaanesh just goes for "BDSM" all the time when Gluttony, Greed, and Sloth aren't really touched on (Khorne does Wrath, Tzeentch does Envy, Nurgle does his own thing, and they all hit on Pride in different ways). Gluttony in particular is something that probably has a lot of potential for daemons, or daemons which steal bits of you as you fight them, and a Slaaneshi assassin who will only make the perfect kill sounds like a fun adversary, as two ideas from the top of my head.

Admittedly, I think making a wargame unit based around Sloth would be difficult (An aura debuff effect on the enemy, which they can solve using violence at the cost of the effect temporarily increasing?) but the rest could be done.

Are you familiar with the Lazy Marines? :grin:

Seriously, I don't know, I never got the impression that W40K daemons were based on Christian ideas of sin per se. More so on four different primal fears - of huge angry things that want to kill you, of situations that are too large and complicated for you to understand or control, of sickness and decay, and, yes, of sexuality and the ways it can be turned against you. Chaos always felt to me like the embodiment of those weird dreams you have when you're running a fever, which I think is more interesting than just having them come straight out of Dante's Inferno like the demons in so many other settings.
 
Are you familiar with the Lazy Marines? :grin:

Seriously, I don't know, I never got the impression that W40K daemons were based on Christian ideas of sin per se. More so on four different primal fears - of huge angry things that want to kill you, of situations that are too large and complicated for you to understand or control, of sickness and decay, and, yes, of sexuality and the ways it can be turned against you.
Yeah, they're not representative of 'sins'. In the original chaos books the chaos powers were not entirely negative impulses... like Khorne was bloodlust but also valor, Nurgle is tied up with natural cycles of decay, but also perseverance against adversity.
 
Seriously, I don't know, I never got the impression that W40K daemons were based on Christian ideas of sin per se. More so on four different primal fears - of huge angry things that want to kill you, of situations that are too large and complicated for you to understand or control, of sickness and decay, and, yes, of sexuality and the ways it can be turned against you. Chaos always felt to me like the embodiment of those weird dreams you have when you're running a fever, which I think is more interesting than just having them come straight out of Dante's Inferno like the demons in so many other settings.
I tend to think of Slaanesh more as "the dangers of giving in to temptation" than just "sexuality turned against you"; no matter what your depravity of choice is, Slaanesh should have something special that can turn your head.

They touch on excess of sensation in a few bits of Slaanesh lore - Noise Marines, frex, or Dechala and her mutants - and Lucius touches on the dangers of pride. But Slaanesh still feels, to me, like the god with the most untapped horror potential, the one where you could just challenge the designers and writers "do your worst".

(I do miss the "positive sides" representation of early chaos, it helped make turning to them feel more like a choice that someone could justify to themselves based on good intentions.)
 
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