Warhammer Fantasy: What do I need to know?

[Sorcerer Blob]

So for awhile I have been interested in the WHFRPG but don't even know where to begin. So as a total Warhammer newb what do I need to know and where should I start?

[Sorcerer Blob]

A humble bump looking for assistance in expanding my RPG repertoire!

[Morty]

The first thing you need to know is, of course, that the world of Warhammer is brutal, dirty and dangerous. Your adventurer isn't really anyone special in terms of skill, so you'll need to be smart to solve your problems and survive dangerous situations. Magic is especially dangerous to use.
From a mechanical point of view, everything is a bit more randomized than in most systems. You roll for your starting career - unless your GM decides otherwise - and your initial stats.

[Selrahc]

Starting characters are weak. Probably amongst the weakest I've seen in an RPG. If you go by default character generation, you've got quite a large chance of ending up a ragpicker, a wood chopper or some other dirt poor peasant with no skills, toughness or equipment to speak of. Quite likely though you'll be given a choice of class. That way you're someone halfway competent like a squire, or an hunter or a town guard.. maybe even a hedge witch or priest. Even still, you'll have bad odds at surviving a fight with a pack of goblins, let alone an orc. Wounds are brutal, and have a good chance of being permanent. Characters power up slowly. The world is brutal. Magic is unreliable. Their are a lot of superstitious idiots and arrogant pricks around. In general, Dwarves and Elves are both more powerful than humans and have cooler starting careers, Halflings are weaker and have more mundane ones.


Play smart if you want to survive. Armour is really handy. Don't pick fights that you don't need to. Run from a fight if you can.

To sum up the world in a few paragraphs...


The Old World is roughly analogous to medieval Europe, on the turning point of the Renaissance. The main human faction is the Empire. The Empire is Germany, split into various Elector states. The citizens of the Empire are for the most part, fairly stupid and superstitious. The leaders are grizzled and ruthless. They worship a pantheon of fairly benevolent gods headed by Sigmar, the first emperor. The Empire has a loose alliance with the surrounding nations, and a loose accord with the Dwarves and Elves. Human magic in the Empire is dominated by the magical schools, fixed disciplines of magic. Neighbouring the Empire are the firm allies Kislev(Russia), Estalia (Spain), the Border Princes(Italy) and their biggest rivals Bretonnia(France, overlayed with Arthurian stereotypes)

Dwarves are everything you'd expect with a vaguely steampunky overlay and a vengeance fixation. They live in tunnels criss crossing the world, and spend most of their time fighting orcs. Dwarves have no magical abilities, but create magical runed items which are a lot safer. Dwarves have a long standing grudge against Elves after an ancient war called the War of the Beard.

Elves are hyper magical, long lived and basically all arrogant arses. They live on an island isolated from any major attacks, but are periodically raided by the Dark Elves who live on floating sky fortresses. their magic is more powerful, and less constrained. Some elves live in the forest as wood elves. They're even more prickly to deal with.

Halflings are jolly cooks, endemic in one of the provinces of the Empire. Their main military forces consist of mercenaries. They have a kinship with Ogres, and are generally resistant to Chaos and Magic.

Vampires, Orcs and the forces of Chaos all routinely invade, with the forces of Chaos being the most dangerous. Chaos is raw unfettered magic, and many citizens of the empire secretly worship its might. The lands of Chaos are ruled by Daemons, and the human inhabitants broadly take the role of vikings wildmen.

Orcs and Goblins are hill barbarians, they represent one of the more overt threats to peace. Breeding quickly, and gathering numbers to fight and kill. They are more of a threat to the Border Princes, but the Empire will often see Orc Invasions too.

A new threat is the Skaven menace. A vast underground empire that has only recently come to light. They have powerful warpstone machines, and seem to be sometimes working with Chaos. Skaven assassins destabilize societies around the world. The horned rat is something that lords may learn to dread.

Vampires and Necromancers rule a small dark kingdom, although their threat can be felt across the old world. Less well off vampires will often try and work up some personal power by attacking Empire holdings.

The world in general is untamed. Woods and mountains are filled with beasts. Trolls, dragons, griffins, giants, beastmen and more all lurk ready to eat those who venture from the safety of the land controlled by Empire knights.

To the east of civilization, in mostly wildlands, great Ogre caravans roam the steppes. Escorting travellers along the great trade roads leading to the distant east in return for pay. Ogres are gluttonous giants, ruled by their appetites but willing to work for pay. Mercenary ogres show up in the employ of the more well to do tyrants all over the world, from the Chaos Wastes to Cathay.

Across the seas are the distant lands of Khemri(Undead Ancient Egypt) and Lustria(Lizard Aztecs), as well as the mostly undocumented human kingdoms of Cathay and Araby.

[kaomera]

James Wallis will sink your barge. And he won't be sorry or apologetic about it, because it was never a really good barge and it deserved to be sunk.

(link (http://www.criticalmiss.com/issue8/jameswallisreplies1.html) is NSFW due to some language)

[Sorcerer Blob]

James Wallis will sink your barge. And he won't be sorry or apologetic about it, because it was never a really good barge and it deserved to be sunk.

(link (http://www.criticalmiss.com/issue8/jameswallisreplies1.html) is NSFW due to some language)

I know nothing of the game or said campaign and thoroughly enjoyed tht site and related stories!

As an aside; what book(s) are absolutely necessary to playing WHFRPG?

[kaomera]

As an aside; what book(s) are absolutely necessary to playing WHFRPG?
Core book for 1e or 2e, core box for 3e. That's really all that's essential.

[Sorcerer Blob]

Are there any merits to a specific version over another? The more I read about the lore the more interested I am in the system/setting.

[kaomera]

Are there any merits to a specific version over another? The more I read about the lore the more interested I am in the system/setting.
OK, I'm sure I'll get some of this wrong, but:

1e is old-school. It's well out of print and a bit clunky, but it's my personal favorite. (I can't claim that being my personal choice makes it the best or even a good game for you...) Some of the adventures written for it are really, really great. It does help if you're somewhat familiar with the setting, possibly via. the miniatures game.

2e is a more modern re-working of 1e. It's also out of print, and although it's pretty recent it can be hard to find copies of many of the books (they where snatched up when 3e was announced / came out).

3e is the currently-in-print version. Mechanically it seems kind of gimmicky to me, with special dice and a bunch of cardstock play aids and such. That's not automatically a bad thing - FFG does that stuff pretty well. The core box is, unfortunately, $100; but that's enough for four people to play (there are some complaints that there may not be enough dice in the box to cover every possibility). I think that's 3 PCs + GM, but it could well be 4 + GM, I'm not 100% certain. So that would work out to $20 or $25 per person, if you're willing to split ownership.

It's an interesting concept, and the system is pretty unique from what I've seen. 3e is actually most likely to be the easiest version to get into at this point (unless you just spot a used copy of 1e or 2e at a decent price / condition), but I've found that in most cases either the GM just ends up buying the box and / or everyone wants a copy (so you can read the rules at home, etc.) and that gets pretty pricey...

[tensai_oni]

I played first edition, in fact it was my first tabletop RPG! A lot of people described Warhammer well enough already, but I'll throw a bit in of my own anyway.

You may be familiar with Warhammer Fantasy Battle - it's grim and gritty, but still has epic armies with monsters, giant dragons, undead and wizards. Warhammer Fantasy Roleplaying Game is nothing like that. It's still gritty, but very down to earth and low-powered. You won't be fighting a Chaos demon, but cultists that try to summon one - because if they succeed they won already. You won't fight off an invading goblin army, only a small bandit party. And human bandits are even more likely than that. And it will still be deadly and exciting.

Your characters eventually grow in power, enough to face greater threats such as ogres, and yes even giants and dragons. But... I have yet to see that happen. Development is slow unless the game master is really benevolent with experience, and encounters are deadly. Expect the party members to be a band of eternally dirty, tired sellswords who abandoned their daily lives for who-knows-what reasons rather than a glamorous party of esteemed heroes.

Until DnD 3.0 was imported to Poland, WFRP was its most popular gaming system. Halfway because AD&D was relatively obscure and something had to fill the void and Warhammer looked "generic fantasy" enough (but isn't, even if many play it that way as a result), and halfway because Sapkowski's Witcher books are really popular and really similar to the game's default flavor. So people knew what to expect and how to play it already.

[Sorcerer Blob]

I find from reading the WFRPG fluff I am intrigued (I've read some on the nets but also read a few years back the Matthias Thulman series) but when I get to the crunchiness I find that I keep commiting the fallacy of viewing it through D&D-tainted eyes (it was my first (and sadly only) RPG experience after all)

What are some good ways to separate the WFRPG elements from what I inadvertently keep assuming about the game due to my limited RPG experiences?

Is the game itself mainly narrative, or does it make use of mats and minis or other methods of representation?

[JellyPooga]

This (http://forum.strike-to-stun.net/index.php)site is a pretty good place to start for getting an idea on how things work in WHFRP, all editions. It's a slow forum, but valuable.

WHFRP is not like D&D; combat is brutal and lethal and if you get into too much of it, it's only a matter of time before you cop a "crit" and die. Even the best warrior in the Old World, fully armed and armoured in plate mail can fall to a puny goblin with a pig-sticker given a lucky roll. It's definitely not a combat oriented game, so battle mats and miniatures are an option, but probably not needed.

WHFRP is normally about thinking your way around a problem rather than meeting it head-on. It's definitely a thinkers game, rather than a brute or a talkers game. If you like playing a Rogue or Wizard in D&D, then you'll probably like playing WHFRP. If you prefer playing a Barbarian in D&D and like nothing better than getting stuck into 5 combats a night, then WHFRP is probably not for you.

As for edition wars...1st ed. is my personal favourite. The rules are clunky, slightly convoluted and far far far from any semblance of balance. For me, though, that's what the Old World is supposed to be like; the rules reflect the setting. 2nd ed. is similar, but the rules have been ironed out, careers balanced and everything's been generally homogenised. If you prefer 4th ed D&D to 3.5 or prefer a plain cracker to one with cheese on, then you'll probably prefer 2nd ed. to 1st. Unfortunately, I can't advise on 3rd ed, but from what I've seen and heard, it looks more like a board or card game than a true roleplaying game. It reminds me of Advanced Heroquest, the GW board-game...technically a roleplaying game, but too caught up in the gimmicks and tables and gridded maps and such to really let loose your imagination.

Just my 2p.