PDA

View Full Version : Warhammer: Roleplaying in the Age of Sigmar?



Archpaladin Zousha
2017-11-11, 05:26 PM
Since the End Times wrapped up the Old World, Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay is basically over. But something struck me since Age of Sigmar has been out for a while: will Games Workshop ever let someone make a tabletop RPG set in the Age of Sigmar?

Honestly I never got into Warhammer Fantasy Battle as a hobby, and only became interested in the setting and the Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay game shortly before End Times got going, and while I get to enjoy the setting with Total War: Warhammers 1 and 2, I still feel kind of depressed that even if I pick up and play the tabletop RPG, the specter of canon hovers over any adventures taking place there, since any characters you make are essentially doomed to a meaningless demise when the End Times happen.

I always felt that the iterations of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay really fleshed out the setting, especially since you weren't big mover and shakers in the setting like Teclis or Emperor Karl Franz, just people struggling to make your way in the harsh world of the Warhammer setting, and it feels like Age of Sigmar really doesn't have the same depth because all it has are broad-strokes lore in the army books and specifics only in the tie-in novels about the movers and shakers, a state of affairs which I find incredibly disappointing.

So will there ever be a tabletop RPG for the new setting? Or are the only such games being made now locked into the grim darkness of the far future?

cesius
2017-11-11, 05:49 PM
I've heard the most recent book Spear of Shadows is the first in a series meant to add more "ground level" to the setting. I don't know about an RPG though.

Koo Rehtorb
2017-11-11, 06:01 PM
Just declare the end times and Age of Sigmar to be bad non-canon fanfiction. I sure did.

Eldan
2017-11-11, 06:27 PM
Sigmar entirely lacks a ground level, so far. Normal people barely show up and the geography is very broad strokes. You'd basically have to invent the setting from nothing.

Talakeal
2017-11-11, 06:37 PM
I actually thought the End Times were very well done, especially by Games Workshop standards, and nicely brought almost all of the dangling plot threads to a close.

Sure, it was bleak, but the setting has always been bleak, the original Grimdark setting. There was never any question that the world would eventually fall to Chaos, that has been stated many times since the very beginning.


Age of Sigmar, on the other hand, blech. Everything I see about it looks atrocious, and in my head canon the End Times were just that, the end. Its time to let Warhammer rest in peace.


But yeah, if you don't like, fix it. Saving the world is against canon (and tone) of the Warhammer world, but so what? Its your game!

Eldan
2017-11-11, 06:44 PM
I thought the End Times were rushed. There wasn't a reason to have everything happen at once, was there? Nagash awaking could have filled a campaign by itself, you shouldn't also need the gods dying, Archaon uniting chaos, Malekith returning to Ulthuan and the Skaven crashing the moon all in the same short book series.

Talakeal
2017-11-11, 06:53 PM
I thought the End Times were rushed. There wasn't a reason to have everything happen at once, was there? Nagash awaking could have filled a campaign by itself, you shouldn't also need the gods dying, Archaon uniting chaos, Malekith returning to Ulthuan and the Skaven crashing the moon all in the same short book series.

True.

But the higher ups decided the game was going to end, and so they only had a year to tie up 30 years with of storylines. All things considered I thought they did an amazing job.

Aneurin
2017-11-12, 05:59 AM
Cubicle 7 are producing an Age of Sigmar RPG that will be about in 2018... apparently. I don't know anything more about it than that, though.

They are also making WFRP 4e which will be out this year, though I don't think there's been any news about it in the last six months, so who knows. It's going to be more like 1e and 2e than 3e (which is a mercy), and some of the people working on it were part of the team who made 1e which is promising. I'm also happy Cubicle 7 got the license, since they seem really good at getting mechanics and setting to line up (like in their Doctor Who RPG and the Middle Earth RPG they did).


While I'm delighted to see WFRP 4e, I'm entirely indifferent to the prospect of an Age of Sigmar especially since I think that the End Times were just handled so incredibly poorly. Retconning major setting points is just bad, better to work with them and find another way to blow up the world (like, I dunno, the Lizardmen trying to enact the Old Ones' plan an screwing it up, or the Vortex on Ulthuan getting out of control).

Plus I liked the original Storm of Chaos. Or, more importantly, I liked the aftermath of the Storm from the perspective of a roleplaying game. The Empire's in trouble; the Northern provinces have been half leveled, and are infested with marauding warbands - which means trade is in shambles - the Southern provinces are jostling for status and making power grabs, so the Emperor's throne is wobbling. Bretonnia sent a lot of it's young nobility off to war; many of them haven't come back, threatening lines of succession across the nation - and, worse, the peasant levys have seen how the Empire works and how it treats its non-noble citizens, and are now wondering why their country can't work like that too...

The Border Princes are a powder keg, as always, but if the Empire burns too low it'll set it off. To the South, Tilea and Estalia are largely untouched, and look at their weakened neighbours with greedy eyes.

On top of all that, throughout the Storm cults came out of hiding and wreaked havoc. Traitors were everywhere. everyone's terrified, now, that their neighbour might be a cultist who chose not to reveal themselves during the Storm. Thousands of people were displaced, lost their homes and everything they owned, and are now turning to theft and banditry to survive.

Compared to all that, a vaguely detailed picture of a realm of eternal war just strikes me as kinda dull, to be quite honest.

Archpaladin Zousha
2017-11-12, 07:20 AM
Cubicle 7?! Oh hey, I love their Yggdrasil and Keltia RPGs! That's reassuring. :smallsmile:

What will Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 4e be like, though? Are they ignoring End Times the way Total War: Warhammer does? :smallconfused:

I kinda liked Storm of Chaos too, if only for the ending where Valten and Archaon have their big showdown and then GRIMGOR IRONHIDE comes out of freakin' nowhere and beats the crap out of the Everchosen before declaring himself DA BEST and leaving the two champions of Order and Chaos wondering what the heck just happened. :smallbiggrin:

Eldan
2017-11-12, 09:46 AM
That was a fun ending, yes.

cesius
2017-11-12, 11:49 AM
I find Age of Sigmar much more palatable when viewed from a certain perspective. I read a lot of 2000AD when I was wronger it's influence on 40k has always been clear. There's more drawn from it, and epic fantasy metal, for Age of Sigmar. Seriously, the tag line for it's prehistory is, "A naked god-king rides a metal comet made from the core of a destroyed world through the cosmos until he makes friends with a star-dragon." It's a different beast altogether from Warhammer Fantasy.

Archpaladin Zousha
2017-11-12, 12:30 PM
Yeah, that's how I saw it. I got the Stormcast Eternal book and found it much easier to read while listening to a DragonForce album. :smallcool:

tensai_oni
2017-11-12, 02:28 PM
WFB and WFRP might as well take place in different worlds anyway, they are incompatible and not just because WFRP is ground level. The latter's whole setting is more down to earth and grittier, with less magic, less supernatural creatures, less overt Chaos activities - a more mundane and seemingly peaceful world that is not wartorn (for the most part), but Chaos's influence is just as strong, just manifesting in insidious, hidden actions, underground cults, etc. It's closer to the Witcher series than to the world as shown in the Battle games. Presentation of whole regions and countries (Bretonnia for example) is different as well.

Not familiar with 3rd ed WFRP by the way. Maybe it changed the setting to be more in tune with the Battle version, who knows.

My point being, the two are so different, Roleplay players can safely ignore what happens in Battle anyway and do their own thing.

Anonymouswizard
2017-11-12, 03:25 PM
Just declare the end times and Age of Sigmar to be bad non-canon fanfiction. I sure did.

I had a friend who did this for a GURPS game. He essentially went with 'before Chaos could make it's big world ending push The Empire managed to enter a full blown Industrial Revolution and ended up having the military power to deal with the Storm of Chaos and stop it in it's tracks, eventually the Empire armed everybody with Napoleonic-era firearms and they managed to fight their way to the North pole, where they imported a lot of Orcs to fight the demons pouring out of the Warp Gate. The remaining marauder tribes mainly switched to worship of Ulric (because unlike Sigmar he knows stuff, wolves man) and some joined the Empire, and eventually there was an Empire versus Skaven war that was essentially WW1 ad WW2 rolled into one.


Cubicle 7?! Oh hey, I love their Yggdrasil and Keltia RPGs! That's reassuring. :smallsmile:

Small note, Yggdrasil and Keltia were only translated by Cubicle 7 (who aren't doing it anymore), they're actually made by a French company (translates as something like 'The Seventh Circle', also did Qin: the Warring states and Kuro), Cubicle 7 did the two current LotR games (and Adventures in Middle Earth actually did what was required to make it work with 5e), the Doctor Who game, the Laundry Files RPG, and used to publish Rocket Age.

Archpaladin Zousha
2017-11-12, 04:26 PM
Oh! That must be why I can't find them on the website anymore. Thanks for the info, and the reassurance that they're still good even if they just translated the games with their logo in them that I've actually played (I haven't played The One Ring or World War Cthulhu or any of those other ones). :smallredface:

Aneurin
2017-11-12, 05:25 PM
Cubicle 7?! Oh hey, I love their Yggdrasil and Keltia RPGs! That's reassuring. :smallsmile:

What will Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 4e be like, though? Are they ignoring End Times the way Total War: Warhammer does? :smallconfused:

I kinda liked Storm of Chaos too, if only for the ending where Valten and Archaon have their big showdown and then GRIMGOR IRONHIDE comes out of freakin' nowhere and beats the crap out of the Everchosen before declaring himself DA BEST and leaving the two champions of Order and Chaos wondering what the heck just happened. :smallbiggrin:

I just had a look around, and there seems to be word about WFRP 4e (https://grimandperilous.com/warhammer-fantasy-roleplay-4th-edition-emerge-from-cubicle-7-at-gen-con/)! Though, for some reason, it's not on the Cubicle 7 website so take it with a pinch of salt. Also has a bit of info on the AoS RPG.

The Grimgor thing was one of the things I liked about the retcon (it didn't happen before they changed the way the Storm turned out). Even if it felt more 40k than Fantasy, it was just a very orc-like thing - more interested in the fight than the kill.

Archpaladin Zousha
2017-11-12, 05:31 PM
Oh, there's official word on Cubicle7's (http://cubicle7.co.uk/our-games/warhammer-fantasy-roleplay/) website too! :smallbiggrin:

Archpaladin Zousha
2017-11-14, 09:36 AM
Speaking of which, have there BEEN any updates regarding WHFR4E's release date? The announcement looks like it was from April for release "later this year," but this year's almost over! :smallconfused:

Minty
2017-11-19, 07:43 AM
Just declare the end times and Age of Sigmar to be bad non-canon fanfiction. I sure did.

This. I never understood why people are so beholden to official storylines. When I played Warhammer, we even stripped out all the magic careers, made elves non-playable and never found outside deep forests, dwarves long extinct, and deleted halflings altogether.

It's like people who complain about Forgotten Realms because of all the high level NPCs. Just use the geography, broad cultural details, and ditch any history and characters you don't want. It's not difficult.

Anonymouswizard
2017-11-19, 01:23 PM
This. I never understood why people are so beholden to official storylines. When I played Warhammer, we even stripped out all the magic careers, made elves non-playable and never found outside deep forests, dwarves long extinct, and deleted halflings altogether.

It's like people who complain about Forgotten Realms because of all the high level NPCs. Just use the geography, broad cultural details, and ditch any history and characters you don't want. It's not difficult.

At least with me, it's because I love half the FR, but dislike the other half. I could take or leave the geography, but think the pantheon and Weave are kinda cool (although I'd prefer the Weave to be deity agnostic), but hate almost every culture and NPC I've encountered.

So what I've done is, instead of wasting time on the FR themselves, taken the gods I like, combined them with some cultures from a setting I like (specifically Mystara's Hollow Earth) and bam, I just need some geography. The problem is 5e shoves the NPCs down my throat, almost every sourcebook is named after an NPC from the realms, and the one I might actually be interested in is the NPCiest. 'Oh, look at these two FR characters talking about monsters, did you just want the race and monster options? Too bad, it's always Forgotten Realms'. I want to see some more support for Dark Sun, Planescape, or Birthright, but that'll only happen if they can be shoved into the Realms.

So the Realms can go to Baator. They were fine back when I could ignore them, but now I can't get rules for playing goblins without them being shoved in my face.

Aneurin
2017-11-19, 01:54 PM
Speaking of which, have there BEEN any updates regarding WHFR4E's release date? The announcement looks like it was from April for release "later this year," but this year's almost over! :smallconfused:

Not that I can find, unfortunately. I'm wondering if they're going to do a Christmas release, but I'd have thought there'd be something more by now if that was the case.

Archpaladin Zousha
2017-11-19, 02:51 PM
That's kinda disappointing. Would it be worth it to pick up the 2e version of WHFRP, since at least is available for purchase on DriveThruRPG if I'm looking for a Warhammer role-playing fix? Or would that just be a waste of money? :smallconfused:

Aneurin
2017-11-19, 03:05 PM
That's kinda disappointing. Would it be worth it to pick up the 2e version of WHFRP, since at least is available for purchase on DriveThruRPG if I'm looking for a Warhammer role-playing fix? Or would that just be a waste of money?

It's a decent system, and there's still a fair bit of support and love for it out there, despite Warhammer Fantasy Tabletop going out the window.

I don't know what the release of 4e is going to do to the number of people wanting to play 2e, though. I'd say got for it, 2e will always be playable and I doubt that 4e is going to be so perfect and amazing you'll never want to touch 2e again (though it would be awesome if were that good, obviously), but it depends on your current financial situation as to whether you'd want to chance it.

Minty
2017-11-19, 05:47 PM
At least with me, it's because I love half the FR, but dislike the other half. I could take or leave the geography, but think the pantheon and Weave are kinda cool (although I'd prefer the Weave to be deity agnostic), but hate almost every culture and NPC I've encountered.

I've never actually played FR. I have, however, seen people complain that you can't do anything in the Realms because there's so many books to catch up on, and you can't do xyz because Elminster, and you can't get rid of Elminster without unravelling the history of blah blah blah and so on. I've seen this turn into a quite heated debate.



It's a decent system, and there's still a fair bit of support and love for it out there, despite Warhammer Fantasy Tabletop going out the window.

2e is the only version of Warhammer I've played, and I liked it, although I always found roll-under-skill systems a bit harsh if the GM doesn't remember to add bonuses for easy challenges. Otherwise, most starting characters will have a less than 40% chance of being able to do anything.

Also, some people seem to have difficulty understanding the career system. I've played with people who couldn't grasp that your character's career is just their day job, and not a description of their inner soul or something.

Morty
2017-11-19, 06:27 PM
WFRP 2e is an old system and it really shows. Like Minty said, you need to remember to assign bonuses to easy tasks, otherwise starting characters are very inept. But it doesn't help the inherent swinginess of d100. Combat between inexperienced characters is likewise very likely to consist of missed attacks.

It does help to remember about luck points that afford rerolls. They're an easily-overlooked rule.

Archpaladin Zousha
2017-11-19, 09:12 PM
I see. Thank you for the advice!

How's the quality of writing for their pre-written campaigns? I've heard of several: Paths of the Damned, The Thousand Thrones and the Enemy Within. Are those all of them? Just curious.

Jase254
2018-11-13, 02:37 PM
I've never played Warhammer RPG but I love the world. How hard would it be to just use the Aos Age of Myth, or the setting after the Realmgate war and just use dnd 3.5 rules? We always play 3.5 in Forgotten Realms. And I have talked my group into trying out the Warhammer world. So i just wonder if that would be to much of a hassle to even try it? Or should I just get a version of Warhammer RPG?
Also we use a altered version on 3.5 we usually max out at level 10-11 and we just have the extra feats and specials in earlier levels, so u get to experience ur classes whole abilities but it is way less hp and lower numbers all around. Plus we give
less experience then normal so it balances out. It makes it more realistic with 65-80 hp opposed to 165-180 or more hp. We make stuff harder to hit but when u do hit you do real damage to them. Opposed again to hitting a monster 20 times to kill it.
I read somewhere that Warhammer RPG is more realistic in terms of higher level players being more realistic as far as taking hits and whatnot, that's what we want to play..... hero's but not super saiyans who slay dragons and pit fiends to pass the time.

lunaticfringe
2018-11-13, 11:41 PM
I've never played Warhammer RPG but I love the world. How hard would it be to just use the Aos Age of Myth, or the setting after the Realmgate war and just use dnd 3.5 rules? We always play 3.5 in Forgotten Realms. And I have talked my group into trying out the Warhammer world. So i just wonder if that would be to much of a hassle to even try it? Or should I just get a version of Warhammer RPG?
Also we use a altered version on 3.5 we usually max out at level 10-11 and we just have the extra feats and specials in earlier levels, so u get to experience ur classes whole abilities but it is way less hp and lower numbers all around. Plus we give
less experience then normal so it balances out. It makes it more realistic with 65-80 hp opposed to 165-180 or more hp. We make stuff harder to hit but when u do hit you do real damage to them. Opposed again to hitting a monster 20 times to kill it.
I read somewhere that Warhammer RPG is more realistic in terms of higher level players being more realistic as far as taking hits and whatnot, that's what we want to play..... hero's but not super saiyans who slay dragons and pit fiends to pass the time.

If you are comfortable with 3.5 and know the Warhammer lore I think you can pull it off. I have played Warhammer games that didn't use the ttrpg ruleset, it worked. It does, imx, lack the right feel. It seems like it's hard for people to get into the idea you are a dirty peasant in d&d, too much protagonist entitlement. You think you Heroes in D&D, in Warhammer you are trying to survive. That world doesn't give a crap about you...and speaking of crap.

I once rolled for my WHFR starting Career (you can roll your entire character, it's amazing), got Dung Collector and started the game literally with ****.

If you can find a cheap copy of 1e or 2e or free online, give it a whirl. It's really fun.

xuhao1991
2018-11-14, 04:36 AM
If you can squint your eyes hard enough, there's some new details about Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay and Age of Sigmar direct

LeSwordfish
2018-11-14, 05:17 AM
This thread is pretty heavily necromantic: can I suggest further discussion moves to our general 40K/WHF RPGs thread? (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?423348-Warhammer-amp-40K-RPGs-Thread-III-With-Friends-Like-These-Who-Needs-Heresies)

Mr Beer
2018-11-15, 09:48 PM
Just declare the end times and Age of Sigmar to be bad non-canon fanfiction. I sure did.

+1 to this