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Half-Orc Rage
2012-02-28, 11:14 AM
A couple years ago I briefly played D&D with a group I found online. While we played, this one guy was there with the ulterior motive of pushing the Warhammer Fantasy RPG. I looked at the books he had out of curiosity and it appeared much like the old Star Wars rpg where you had a template you started with straight out of the box. On top of that, the guy said you rolled for the template, so you didn't really even choose the character you played, as opposed to our game of D&D 3.5 which is very customizeable. He told me about how he had rolled a "camp follower" once and had a lot of fun with it in a tone of voice that didn't make me want to hang around him.

Recently I signed up on meetup.com and found another group to play D&D with. The Pathfinder game is one 'event' out of a larger group of local players. I noticed several other "events" were for Warhammer Fantasy. Seems like they are all run by one player who is out to convert people. "Put down that stereotypical +1 sword and pick up a rusty dagger as you fight for your life," because I guess it's lower fantasy that D&D, and that's cool, because why play a game where you can have any cool powers or gear?

Anyway, what is it about this rpg that has people trying to convert everyone? Is there some awesomeness there that I'm just not seeing? Initially I had a bad impression because of the first creepy dude but now I'm actually wondering.

Fatebreaker
2012-02-28, 11:35 AM
Warhammer Fantasy is a universe which originated as a tabletop wargame. It now includes video games, roleplaying games, novels, all sorts of things. And it is amazing.

The actual roleplaying game, however, is a very different animal than both the Warhammer wargame and the Warhammer world in general. Since the fictional world is a very nasty place (all magic is literally channeling the very essence of hell through your soul and hoping that you do not become possessed, on fire, or a gateway to a dimension filled with homicidal immortals), the game chooses to portray this in a variety of ways.

In the wargame, you command armies. Massive hordes clash as mages hurl titanic blasts of mystical energy and heroes duel in mighty combat. Monsters rampage through serried ranks of grim warriors, and every day is a fleeting moment before the inevitable triumph of the Dark Gods of Chaos.

In the roleplaying game, you are probably weak, squishy, frail, and helpless. Players begin with very little. Combat is very deadly. One method of character creation calls on you to roll up a random class and play that (you don't get to chose who you're born as, after all). Magic is rare and semi-suicidal. Adventuring is legitimately terrifying. Dying is a real thing.

It's a fun game, though. It has a different mentality than D&D. And with a few houserules ("I want to play this. This is what I'm going to play. Screw random rolls."), it's well worth it.

The wargame website (where you can get an idea for the overall world) is:

http://www.games-workshop.com

The roleplaying website (where you can check out the latest edition) is:

http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_minisite.asp?eidm=93

I haven't played it in a long time. Later editions are moving more towards a heroic model than the older, Cthulhu-esque "you are a normal person and everything you fight is meaner than you" model, I think (but I hope someone who has played the most recent edition can tell us). But the world is fun, and with the right crew, it can be a blast. Give it a shot!

--

Edit: Afterthought! Glad to see that creepy guy didn't scare you off. Every game has one of those. Also, don't worry -- just because he wants to play the rusty-knife game, that's not necessarily all that the system has to offer. Characters who survive can gain incredible power. One of the big themes of the world is that power can be easily acquired... but it comes with a price. There's a huge mythology behind it all, and it has some Very Cool high-powered characters.

JellyPooga
2012-02-28, 02:39 PM
Fatebreaker has pretty much said it all. Ignoring the "edition which must not be named", the two incarnations of WFRP are pretty similar.

- 1st edition is for hardcore roleplayers who don't care about "party balance", "appropriate level encounters" and suchlike. It's grim, it's gritty and if you die there's no coming back. Even the most hardcore pit-fighter who's armed to the teeth can die because a goblin stabbed him in the face. You'll find parties where Scholars are rubbing shoulders with Rat-Catchers and Labourers adventuring side-by-side with Nobles because that's the way the dice roll and that's the way the setting works...greatness is achieved not by deeds and legends, but by power. The guy who backstabs his way to the top of the Merchants Guild is just as legitimate as the dude who bought the position or simply strolled in and incinerated the top brass with magic (though the latter will likely have more than a few witch-hunters on your case). With the power you earn, however, there's very little responsibility but you've always got to watch your back for the next guy who wants the title. No-one is your best friend, no-one can really be trusted and agents of chaos are everywhere. In practice, 1st ed WHFRP is something like a Blackadder/Call of Cthulhu/Conan the Barbarian mash-up.

- 2nd edition is a bit less "old school"...Careers are more 'balanced', the rules are more streamlined and tidy and it all looks a bit prettier. Even the fluff in 2nd edition is a bit less dark and more multicultural. At the end of the day, though, it's still the Warhammer Fantasy world; peasants still stink, being hit with a big stick hurts and you will catch a disease from sleeping at the roughest inn in town, which in turn may get you accused of being a chaos cultist. In practice, 2nd edition is a bit less Cthulhu Horror and Blackadder Comedy than 1st edition and more Conan Heroic, but not a lot.

Morty
2012-02-28, 02:47 PM
I've never noticed people trying to convert "everyone" to WFRP. Well, except on the Polish RPG boards, but that's because the Polish WFRP fanbase can get a bit... rabid.
Anyway, the appeal of WFRP is the low-fantasy atmosphere. It's grim, it's gritty and the tension it offers is much different than the one present in D&D. You're not a badass hero but a person who for some reason took up adventuring and is trying to survive in a harsh world. It's attractive for a lot of people.
Mechanics, on the other hand... they do their job, but they're nothing special and some rules are just clunky.

Waddacku
2012-02-28, 03:38 PM
If you start out as a rat catcher, you get 1d10 rats on a pole and a small but vicious dog.

Siegel
2012-02-28, 03:55 PM
I've never noticed people trying to convert "everyone" to WFRP. Well, except on the Polish RPG boards, but that's because the Polish WFRP fanbase can get a bit... rabid.
Anyway, the appeal of WFRP is the low-fantasy atmosphere. It's grim, it's gritty and the tension it offers is much different than the one present in D&D. You're not a badass hero but a person who for some reason took up adventuring and is trying to survive in a harsh world. It's attractive for a lot of people.
Mechanics, on the other hand... they do their job, but they're nothing special and some rules are just clunky.

Sounds a bit like Burning Wheel :smallbiggrin:

Half-Orc Rage
2012-02-28, 07:36 PM
Thanks. Probably not dropping Pathfinder for it anytime soon but I might try it if people I play with are into it.

Knaight
2012-02-28, 07:41 PM
Sounds a bit like Burning Wheel :smallbiggrin:

Burning Wheel at least has very solid mechanics. The issue there is that there are just so many of them.

Alleran
2012-02-28, 08:25 PM
If you start out as a rat catcher, you get 1d10 rats on a pole and a small but vicious dog.
Which is very good for starting players, since it adds an extra layer of survivability and a higher chance of not dying a horrible death. Because in WHFRP, the point is that you will probably die a very horrible death. You might save the town, the city, the nation or even the world, but odds are that nobody will know and nobody will care, and you've only delayed the inevitable. At the two poles are the gateways to the Realm of Chaos, from where all magic flows, but they're not the sort of gateway you can actually close. They are quite literally holes in reality that lead to what amounts to Hell. And they are only getting bigger.

Oh, spellcasters? Yeah, they have some good tricks, and if you play them right, they can potentially be some of the most powerful characters around. On the other hand, everybody will hate you. The stereotypical "backward peasant" is in full force, and expect the GM to take advantage of that. And you can die just as easily as anybody else - there are very few spells that actually work defensively, and you won't be able to keep them up constantly (nor would you want to, since that invites risk that the energies you're playing with will turn back on you). Don't play an elf, either. People don't like those.

Warpstone? Don't go near the stuff. You'll get a mutation, and you'll get attacked for being mutated. You'll probably die. And warpstone is the mucky essence of the Winds of Magic (that flow, as mentioned, from the Realm of Chaos) given physical form, corrupted by its stagnation and prevention from being free-flowing.

It's a dark, dark world. But fun.

Tengu_temp
2012-02-28, 08:59 PM
WFRP 1e was the most popular RPG system in Poland before around 10 years ago, so I'm gonna talk mostly about it. It's the RPG of my childhood.

The thing is, there are two schools of thought when it comes with this game: one of them tries to make everything as grim and gritty as possible, with quests where often your biggest reward is survival, and the other one just approaches it as a standard low fantasy*. And the thing is, most of the splatbooks go with the second portrayal as well. Just look at the official adventures - you're fighting and defeating Chaos cults, orcs, evil wizards... It's not really that different from your typical RPG fare.

The rules are fast in both character creation and gameplay, the random character creation can result in some interesting and/or funny combinations, and the career path system is a pretty interesting one... But other than that, they kinda blow. Wounds are very hard to heal, yeah, but it's very easy to make a character who will rarely if ever get wounded, either due to having ridiculously huge Toughness and heavy armor or huge Initiative and the Dodge skill (elves are especially good here). And while Fate points, which you can use to cheat death, are technically a non-renewable source, some of the adventures give them to you anyway. Also, becoming a mage is hard but magic is really overpowered.

I have little experience with 2e and 3e, so I'm not gonna talk about them. All I know is that they make the game less gritty - you can even buy cheap healing potions!

* - it's worth noting that typical Polish fantasy is much lower and grittier than typical American fantasy, so what would be considered low fantasy in the west often is just the norm here. The Witcher saga was one of the trend setters for that, I believe.