Warhammer Fantasy/40K RPG Megathread

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Warhammer has its fast food - who can forget rat on a stick
Get your meat pie! Made from genuine animal parts! Sausages so fresh the pig doesn't know they're gone!

Love a bit of Cut My Own Throat Dibbler.

Though I do seem to remember them eating rat on a stick in Conan the Barbarian. Around the same time they get black lotus and Conan punches out a camel.
 
I'm going off of some early WD bit about the fantasy Dark Elves, who followed Slaanesh before turning to Khaine... I was pretty sure it mentioned Kaine being Khorne.
The Eldar have Kaela Mensha Khaine , Bloody Handed Khaine, whose avatar sometimes shows up on the battleground.

Not that it matters... everything is liquid in GW's lore.
I like the idea of the chaos gods having lots of avatars... like Nyarlathotep.
As you say, it's liquid. But my understanding of WFRP lore here is that the majority faction of the Dark Elves follows Khaine and that Slaanesh is a small illegal cult headed up by the Witch King's mother.

I actually prefer Khaine not being an avatar of Khorne. I like having evil gods who aren't chaos.

One idea I have for an adventure is that the characters track down some Khainite ritual murders to find out that it's actually local cultists picking off Chaos cultists one by one. At that point they have to decide whether to leave an evil cult intact, on the grounds that it's actually in the forefront of the fight against Chaos.
 
Get your meat pie! Made from genuine animal parts! Sausages so fresh the pig doesn't know they're gone!

Love a bit of Cut My Own Throat Dibbler.

Though I do seem to remember them eating rat on a stick in Conan the Barbarian. Around the same time they get black lotus and Conan punches out a camel.
Was it rat? I thought it looked more like a some lizard.
 
'Rat On A Stick' was a thing in World of Warcraft... there was a quest where you collected rats for the vendor, in the subway.
 
"Rat on a Stick" was also a Judges Guild module for Tunnels & Trolls. It was a 10-level dungeon. You could play it straight (as straight as T&T gets, anyway), or you could set up "Rat on a Stick" franchises inside, and attempt to turn a profit on your investment without getting killed. There were supplemental rules for those who wished to go that route. I have a sealed copy. 32 pages, and thin as a razor blade. Love that janky JG quality! Make no mistake, though, it's a fully stocked and featured dungeon, that no party would likely come close to clearing. It also allows the (suicidal) party to immediately descend to its lowest (and most deadly) level.
 
32 pages, and thin as a razor blade.
Definitely my preferred format for hardcopy adventures! Gygax did it with B2 and it is still a solid format for writers that stick to terse, evocative descriptions and strictly gameable content. I swear that the industry must pay by the word because so many adventures are bloated with useless garbage that is unusable at the table. Many adventures feel like they were written to entertain the reader with lonely fun instead of being used at the table.
 
I've always been partial to The Commandant's Deep Fried Lizard Parts in their red and white striped bucket.
 
Definitely my preferred format for hardcopy adventures! Gygax did it with B2 and it is still a solid format for writers that stick to terse, evocative descriptions and strictly gameable content. I swear that the industry must pay by the word because so many adventures are bloated with useless garbage that is unusable at the table. Many adventures feel like they were written to entertain the reader with lonely fun instead of being used at the table.


So true. Short and to the point, please. I'm not that smart, and I don't have a lot of free time.

Also "lonely fun" rules.
 
As you say, it's liquid. But my understanding of WFRP lore here is that the majority faction of the Dark Elves follows Khaine and that Slaanesh is a small illegal cult headed up by the Witch King's mother.
I'm getting it from an old 'Regiments of Renown' article about the Witch Elves returning from exile to attack the High Elves
Specifically this bit:

“They had turned from the worship of Slaanesh soon after their exile from the Elven Kingdoms, and, still drawn by the allure of Chaos, took the murderous Khaine as their new Master… <snip> ... For Khaine is that aspect of the Blood God recognised by the Druchii, and the Blood God, known to other races as Khorne, is the sworn enemy of Slaanesh.”

Not that there is any right or wrong about any of it. I'm just a fan of the older (Oldhammer) lore.
 
“They had turned from the worship of Slaanesh soon after their exile from the Elven Kingdoms, and, still drawn by the allure of Chaos, took the murderous Khaine as their new Master… <snip> ... For Khaine is that aspect of the Blood God recognised by the Druchii, and the Blood God, known to other races as Khorne, is the sworn enemy of Slaanesh.”

Not that there is any right or wrong about any of it. I'm just a fan of the older (Oldhammer) lore.
I love the Witch Elf aesthetic, and the new models really benefit from GW's improvements in dynamic posing. I'm not entirely convinced by the Lamias, but I guess now they're a full faction they need some conceptual and aesthetic variety.
 
I love the Witch Elf aesthetic, and the new models really benefit from GW's improvements in dynamic posing.
Wow you're right, the new witch elves look good. Even though I have been a fan of the franchise since age 13 I have to say that GW often fails at modelling female miniatures.
 
I like them too. Too bad they wouldn't fit in with any of my existing Dark Elf stuff... most of it from 3rd/4th edition era.
You should see my museum of old Warhammer miniatures. Skaven are particularly bad, the new stuff and old stuff don't match too well, I should just sell it off.
 
You should see my museum of old Warhammer miniatures. Skaven are particularly bad, the new stuff and old stuff don't match too well, I should just sell it off.
Old Skaven are nice. The Middlehammer one's look like chimps... then the newer plastic were nice again.
 
Old Skaven are nice. The Middlehammer one's look like chimps... then the newer plastic were nice again.

Yup. The original Skaven are fantastic. When they turned it over to Marauder, they were ...less fantastic. And The monkeyrats of 6th are just sad. I like the new ones, but they are more cartoony, like an animated series version. I mostly collect the originals.

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I keep wondering how GW plans to survive the incoming 3d printer/scanner onslaught.

They're not yet at the point of being able to produce minis of GW's quality... but it's only a matter of time. 5/10 years at most.
 
I keep wondering how GW plans to survive the incoming 3d printer/scanner onslaught.

They're not yet at the point of being able to produce minis of GW's quality... but it's only a matter of time. 5/10 years at most.

IF they're smart, they'll eventually sell STL designs. But there's also still going to be people willing to pay for the convenience of being able to buy an army at once, vs spend weeks, even months, printing one. Only official GW models can be used in any of the major tournaments, or in their stores. And GW offers a "full package" approach - minis, rules, books, paints, and storespace for gaming.

I think 10 years is a bit optimistic for 3d printing tech to become both ubiquitous, affordable, and at the same time capable of reproducing the advanced kits made by injection molds.

Eventually they'll probably have to shift their business practices to adapt to changing tech, but that is true of any company.

I think the real indicator will be watching book sales. PoD books have been around longer than 3D printers, but that's a LONG way off from killing traditional publishing methods. Sure, digital books are getting more and more popular, but boutique book saes, like Folio and Easton Press, have actualy had increased sales in recent years. Traditional publishing will move more and more towards a boutique business platform overall, and that's very much what GW wants to be anyways.
 
I keep wondering how GW plans to survive the incoming 3d printer/scanner onslaught.
I don't have any 3D printed figures yet, but I wonder if I would like the material in comparison to GW's plastic or good old metal.
Also, I still generally favor the hand-sculpted look over the computer-sculpted... it's harder to work character and quirky imperfections into computer designs.
 
I don't have any 3D printed figures yet, but I wonder if I would like the material in comparison to GW's plastic or good old metal.

I have a few that are like a cheaper PVC plastic, and some niver ones that are more like a semi-fragile resin. Overall, they are OK, but nowhere near as nice to work with as GW/Perry plastics.

Also, I still generally favor the hand-sculpted look over the computer-sculpted... it's harder to work character and quirky imperfections into computer designs.

Yeah, there's been a resurgence of those lately with the Oldhammer movement, which makes me happy. Just got this bad boy from a small KS by folks in the Oldhammer facebook group...

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How do you feel about the career system in the long run?

I was really peeved at WFRP4 for all but discouraging the ol' career switcheroo; making each career four-tiered is as good as tuning it into a class-and-level system. (Sure, you can still switch careers but it's no longer compulsory, which I, personally, find less fun).

But it also got me thinking about the lifespan of a WFRP character. WFRP2 has no hard cap but most "apex" careers (think High Priest, Wizard Lord, Crime Lord, Knight of the Inner Circle, etc.) will only be available as a character's third or fourth career.

WFRP4 is, well, quite explicit with its four levels for each career. And so is Zweihänder, with its explicitly three-tiered system. (Though again I see no impediment to four or more careers, should a campaign last this long. And Zwei's skill-based prerequisites make for some funny routes for some careers.)

Which leads me to wonder, as I have never run a long-term game of WFRP. How far have you made it, in terms of PC advancement? Three careers? Four?
 
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And on a related note. How strict are you on enforcing career prerequisites for switching? Do you demand that RAW prerequisites be followed at all times, or do you deem it sufficient that the new career make sense in-game?
 
IIRC at 100xp per session, the Zweihander career system would take around 120 sessions to go from beginning to end. That’s certainly longer than any campaign I have run. If I suspected a campaign would go longer I would look to reduce the XP award or use troupe or legacy style play. The same would apply for WFRP2e.
 
While I haven't been tracking the total awards (I'm sure my players have), I have been giving out higher than average awards per session. Last session was worth 350 Reward Points. We only play every second week, but have been running continuously for about a year and a half now and the characters are ranging from beginning to middle of their second career. Still a fair bit of gaming until the current campaign has run its course.
 
It doesn't have The Enemy Within, part 1 of said campaign.

Part one is Shadows Over Bogenhafen. The original Enemy Within adventure is included as part of it.

They likely don't have the rights to Robin Laws's Heart of Chaos, which was published in 2001, long after the original Doomstone books. But that's kinda OK, it was pretty bad.
 
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Part one is Shadows Over Bogenhafen. The original Enemy Within adventure is included as part of it.

They likely don't have the rights to Robin Laws's Heart of Chaos, which was published in 2001, long after the original Doomstone books. But that's kinda OK, it was pretty bad.
That's not what I have. Part 1 is The Enemy Within, a booklet in it's own right, complete with cover map, pullout full of NPC writeups, a breakdown of the political situation in the Empire, obligatory 80s calendar and rules for mutants.

Shadows over Bogenhafen is a separate booklet with a ton of different, but equally useful, stuff. Maps, city breakdown and so on.

Heart of Chaos, unlike the introduction thing that's out there, is pretty bad.
 
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