Who has played WHFRP or Dark Heresy?

[Jolly]

I know Warhammer (and 40K) are less popular here in the States than they are in the UK, and apparently the role playing equivalents are even less common. I've found only a couple game stores (not counting Games Workshop places, not checked them) that have WFRP, and I've never actually seen a copy of Dark Heresy. It's unfortunate as I quite like the fluff (and have ever since I found an old WFRP book at a used bookstore) but I've never found a local group that plays it.

So, who here has experience with the systems? What did you like about them, and where did they fall short? How do they compare to the various D20 systems?

[Bulwer]

I had a really great time playing. Once.

Everyone died at the end.

[Ravens_cry]

I played WHFRP at a Convention. My thoughts? It touts itself as gritty, but really all it was was that death was more random. A single shot could kill you depending what on the crit chart was rolled. However, there was perfectly mundane herb packs that could bring you to full health and everyone got basically the equivilant of an extra life. I am not saying I didn't enjoy it, but at least the way the GM presented it, it didn't feel anymore gritty, just more random.

[big teej]

I too enjoy 40k and I would LOOOOOOVE to play warhammer d20

I have some small experience with dark heresy, its d10 based, and I feel that the system would work very well, if the GM knows the rules!!!!

I enjoyed it immensly, however, despite all the road bumps, I played an imperial guardsman based off of myself and real life.

I feel it captures a very small portion of the world of the inquisition however. a VERY small portion, but given my experience, I could be completely wrong.

/ramble

[comicshorse]

Played WHFRP, both 1st and 2nd edition ( I refuse to have anything to do with the current abomination).
Loved it. The grimmness Ravens_cry refers to is more the horribleness of the world (poverty, plague, massive tyranny and the fact the world is pretty much hanging by a thread) rather than the chance you can just die from one blow, which is indeed balanced by Fate Points.
And the incredible healing properties of herbs is a product of 2nd Edition I prefered first where it took days to heal

[FelixG]

I play Dark Heresy (and Rogue trader) fairly often, they are great games.

[Kifo]

I have Gm'ed Drak Heresy and pretty damn fun, but you can't GM it like you would DnD. I added a space-pirate attack of my making to the start of the newbe adventure from the core book (We had play'd edge of darkness the free adventure from the web stie)
Anyway the group was going for one final puch to drive the pirates of ship, that fight started with one Fire bomb (read Molotov cocktail) that ignited the scury space-dogs and some of their ammo.... lots of dead space-dogs

The point of my sad and linguistically horrendous tail? The enemy got to use tactics and cover if you wand them to stand a chance.

I feel it captures a very small portion of the world of the inquisition however. a VERY small portion, but given my experience, I could be completely wrong.

/ramble

I have to say that I don't agree with you, a Dark Heresy campain can include:

• Wasteland-Warrior shenanigans of a nuke-blasted Frealworld.

• Noir-stile stories in one of the many Hives.

• Battling Xenos on a Agriworld with a medieval tech-level.

• Foiling the plots of a cult in a WH40K warzone.

• Dealing with daemons, Xenos and Emperor-knows-what to save the day at the cost of you soul.

• Fighting the servants of other Inquisitors that think you are too radical or not radical enough.

Not to mention that you can use the game system for all sorts of funs stuff, dose a campaign with Free-boter Orks sound like fun, eh?

[Amphetryon]

It has been years, but I love me some WHFRP. I wish I had access to the rules now, truth to tell.

[fil kearney]

Played WHFRP a few times, and then I got introduced to d20... PrC's feel very similar in the two systems... but I just loathed the amount of random hyjinx in the crit tables.. it was VERY obnoxious... more obnoxious in making 14 attacks in RIFTS.

character creation was figgin fast and easy tho.
I think if I invested more time in learning the fantasy background, I'd enjoy it more, and would likely play it.

I know 40k mythology a bit better than fantasy, but haven't had the chance to play... stumbled into space hulk... but that was essentially just a bug hunt.

Overall experience; positive.

[Volomon]

I know Warhammer (and 40K) are less popular here in the States than they are in the UK, and apparently the role playing equivalents are even less common. I've found only a couple game stores (not counting Games Workshop places, not checked them) that have WFRP, and I've never actually seen a copy of Dark Heresy. It's unfortunate as I quite like the fluff (and have ever since I found an old WFRP book at a used bookstore) but I've never found a local group that plays it.

So, who here has experience with the systems? What did you like about them, and where did they fall short? How do they compare to the various D20 systems?

I'm not sure its unpopular, I can find the book in my local Borders or Barnes and Noble stores. Now if I go to my regular RP/Comics store I might not find it. However this store which is kind of far away has every obscure title old and new like they still sell 3.5 2.0 1.0 of D&D.

As for my experience it's pretty fun I like to paint a pretty gory picture and mind altering effects. Dark Heresy has you covered in this aspect from fear to insanity. It was the most hilarious thing when one player got so feared that he ran clear to the entrance and left the other player fighting against a demon. Amazingly he made it back in time to stop the massacre. I didn't really feel anything unbalanced, maybe the fact that every player can expect to die at any given moment from taint to the word word used in conversation. I'd always recommend having one starting player take a class with a rifle of some kind or semi/full auto. The game will mostly end in defeat merely from lack of weapons.

[Kiero]

Been playing in the WFRP2e game The Shadow of the Sun for about two years now, on and off.

Bit of a love-hate relationship with it. Love my group, the characters and the story we're involved in. Ambivalent about the setting and hate the system.

Can't stand the random-only chargen (fortunately, we at least got to choose our starting careers). Don't like percentile dice. Find the "chain of rolls" in combat tedious, especially because any one step can invalidate an action so that nothing happens. Roll to hit, opponent may dodge or parry, roll damage, it may roll too low to breach the opponent's armour and Toughness. And someone could spend a Fortune Point and get a re-roll. That's without getting into multiple attacks. It's roll after roll after roll, with precious little actually happening most of the time.

[Jolly]

Comicshorse: I thought 2e was the current edition for wfrp. Do they have a third?

[comicshorse]

The third edition is the one from Fantasy Flight that comes in a huge box, costs 80 quid and I have on good authority turns the whole system into a board game.

It came out in late 2009 but my group still uses 2nd Ed and has no plans to change

[Sindri]

I've played Rogue Trader if that counts. My main issue with the system is the incredibly low chances you have when using your skills; the percentile system works well in combat, but breaks down for everyday tasks.
For example, a normal average human has ~20 in every stat, so his chance in a skill he's trained for is ~20% plus modifiers. The modifier for a "routine" task is +20%, and for "easy" it's +30%. This means that an ordinary person, doing the job that they've been trained for their entire life, has about a 40% chance of pulling off a routine task. A high powered adventurer, fully optimized for this specific skill at the expense of all else, has about an 80% chance. At a routine task. So the single most skilled person in the galaxy, by RAW, screws up an ordinary meaningless task a fifth of the time.

And that's assuming that you even have the skill; most career tracks lack many of the basic skills entirely, and the ones they do get are only at very high rank.

If these are the rules governing the 40K universe, I have an alternate theory as to why it's such a crapsack world. There's constant warfare because the diplomats are all morons. There's universal poverty because farmers and craftsmen lose 60% of their product to stupid mistakes. Demons are sucking at my soul because the freakin' God-Emperor himself has a 15% chance of screwing up everything he attempts.

[Swooper]

I've played a few sessions of Dark Heresy, and own the WHFRP 2e book although I haven't had the chance to play it yet.

The main gripe I have about them is the default character creation mechanics. Everything is randomized. Everything. Even your name. This can be easily houseruled away, but for some reason not everyone does it. I have no idea why.

I'm also with Sindri on his dislike for percentile rolls: It's too easy to fail. And if you fail hard enough, Horrible Things will happen to you.

I kind of like the health/injury mechanics, the separation of regular HP and critical damage is a pretty good idea. Of course, once you start taking critical damage, more Horrible Things will happen.

I also love the magic system in WHFRP, which uses a completely different method for determining success than everything else in the game. Instead of percentile dice, you roll Nd10 trying to beat a target number which depends on what spell you're casting. N is any number equal to or less than your Magic attribute. Here's the fun part: The more dice you roll, the bigger the chance of success AND the bigger the chance of yet more Horrible Things, which trigger on double, triple and quadruple rolls (e.g. rolling 7+7+7). So even if you could be rolling three dice, you might want to play it safe and roll only two on a relatively easy spell.

A common gripe with the magic system is that it makes spellcasters too tiered. An apprentice with Magic 1 has a 50% chance of successfully casting a spell with difficulty 6. When he advances to Magic 2, his chance suddenly jumps to 90%.

[big teej]

I have Gm'ed Drak Heresy and pretty damn fun, but you can't GM it like you would DnD. I added a space-pirate attack of my making to the start of the newbe adventure from the core book (We had play'd edge of darkness the free adventure from the web stie)
Anyway the group was going for one final puch to drive the pirates of ship, that fight started with one Fire bomb (read Molotov cocktail) that ignited the scury space-dogs and some of their ammo.... lots of dead space-dogs

The point of my sad and linguistically horrendous tail? The enemy got to use tactics and cover if you wand them to stand a chance.



I have to say that I don't agree with you, a Dark Heresy campain can include:

• Wasteland-Warrior shenanigans of a nuke-blasted Frealworld.

• Noir-stile stories in one of the many Hives.

• Battling Xenos on a Agriworld with a medieval tech-level.

• Foiling the plots of a cult in a WH40K warzone.

• Dealing with daemons, Xenos and Emperor-knows-what to save the day at the cost of you soul.

• Fighting the servants of other Inquisitors that think you are too radical or not radical enough.

Not to mention that you can use the game system for all sorts of funs stuff, dose a campaign with Free-boter Orks sound like fun, eh?

fair enough, I'm more than willing to concede that you are correct, I have very little expereience, and the little bit of the basic handbook I was allowed to read undisturbed made it sound like it was very..... narrow. in scope.

[Glimbur]

I played some Dark Heresy once. We used a pre-published adventure, so I'll spoiler.

Spoiler

Show

I was a psyker aiming for the melee psyker path. We also had a tech-priest type guy, a combat cleric, and an arbite. We did ok in combat, we failed some helpful skill rolls, we ended up embezzling from the Inquisition, then we went to a moving city with every intention of blowing up a temple. We got ambushed by the guy we wanted to avoid and the fight was going badly. So I closed to melee and spiked a firebomb. The good news is that I killed someone, the bad news is that it was our tech-priest. The enemy lived, and we all died. The end.

[Balain]

I played 1st edition Warhammer fantasy Roleplaying. We had a lot of fun. From what I remember, compared to d20 it is much different.

When making characters you didn't pick your class you rolled. Normally you got lesser classes like rat catcher or wood workker.

I remember the spell system only having 4 levels of spells.