WHFRP

Has anyone here played Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay before? What were your experiences like? Which edition would you recommend?

I was looking into 2e because it seems mechanically similar to the 40k RPGs, and my group isn't very interested in 40k so I need a Fantasy alternative.

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I got invited to a group that plays 2e and i really like it so far, haven't played anything in over a decade so i can't compare much. There is ton of career options and combat always feel lethal.

According to my GM the career choices gets way smaller in later editions of WFRP and things get way too simplified but i got no experience myself to judge that.

If you search the 40k General, I think that the Mega link has all the books.

I ran Dark Heresy once, but the players were not familiar with the 40k universe and got bored quickly.

I know, but I was specifically talking about the Fantasy Roleplay version, not 40k.

2nd Edition is the best edition, it's basically a cleaned up, actually-playtested, streamlined 1st Edition. 3rd Edition is a massive left turn, as it's essentially Fantasy Flight's playtest for the dice-pool mechanics they ran with in their SW RPGs. It suffers for being too far in the board game direction, with ability cards and everything.

If 2nd Edition rules seem a bit clunky sometimes, it's entirely doable to take about an hour and update it to the more polished ruleset that the 40k RPGs use. Everything is pretty much convertible, and the bits that take some working out don't really take that much.

Combat is fairly brutal, because starting characters are absolutely shit at it and unlike in gunfights you can't hug cover all the time, becxause you're trying to stab a dude. One house rule that everyone I know uses: make Dodge Blow a basic skill.

Make sure everyone is fully aware of what kind of game it is. If you lead a group into it and they're expecting d&d heroic high fantasy they will die a lot and probably give up o the system. If they're fully aware that they're playing Arnold Rimmer and not Ace Rimmer, they'll "get" it and everyone will have a right laugh.

The career system is amazing for narrative character development, make sure you keep the players moving into careers that they reach via gameplay rather than letting them plan out a 10,000xp build like in d&d.

But can I still play a slayer and smack bitches?

I love 1e, but then again I'm biased. It was one of the first gaming books I ever bought. 2e, from what I've read seems like a decent update, and I wouldn't mind playing it, but never have so...

But I also like magic before the rainbow feces magic appears.

I love 2e, but it's a horrible oversight that they never did a book on dwarves or elves. There are zero rules for playing a priest of any of the dwarf gods for example.

>make sure you keep the players moving into careers that they reach via gameplay rather than letting them plan out a 10,000xp build like in d&d.
this. a 100 times this.

I prefer 1e to 2e, but it's because of my rose-tinted glasses.

Like many other Scandinavians, I didn't start with D&D, but with WFRP. The System is not very streamlined but most rules make a lot of sense. First Edition's Old World Feels more generic than second Edition but that works in favour of it IMO. I often say that old wfrp is 40% historical renaissance, 10% Pirate Movie/Three Musketeers, 10% Call of Cthulhu, 15% D&D and 25% Blackadder/Discworld. It's a heady brew.

2e streamline rules so all work in the same way. But again I personally prefer first edition wher eevery skill description goes into detail about how to use the skill in game, even if individual skills work differently fi

In short: First edition has a charm to it that can only be achieved by being my first game. It is without error, a flawless gem, and I'll flail uselessly at everyone that points out I am being nostalgic.

>The career system is amazing for narrative character development, make sure you keep the players moving into careers that they reach via gameplay rather than letting them plan out a 10,000xp build like in d&d.

At the same time don't fuck them over, I once played in a campaign with a guy who insisted on narrative character development through careers, but then made no effort to actually help roleplay the character's development.

More than once someone had bought every single upgrade in a career and couldn't progress because the GM refused to give them access to the trappings for their next one and couldn't be bothered to work in plot hooks relating to them or work with the players to build up to them.

That sounds like a pretty shit GM, but also sounds like the player was dead set on entering a specific career rather than going where the game took his character - careers have a whole bunch of exits, and anyone can enter another basic career regardless of path (albeit for 200xp rather than 100)

Like all games and groups, WFRP works best when players and GMs communicate well. If you really, really want to play a specific career, tell the GM and if they're worth their salt they'll figure out a way to get you there and have it flow within the campaign. It might take a more roundabout career path than you first thought, and you might have a few left turns that you didn't intend on taking, but you'll get there. You might also have to be proactive about it - if you need a pistol to get into your next career, you're going to have to spend some time hunting one down, because pistols are valuable and the chances of one just "turning up" are slim to none.

>Like many other Scandinavians, I didn't start with D&D, but with WFRP.

Wait, you DIDN'T start with Drakar och Demoner, AKA Swedish Runequest?

> like the player was dead set on entering a specific career rather than going where the game took his character

People can have dreams despite what the world tells them to be, user.

No. But I should have. Ducks rule.

Which is where the next part of my post comes in. Sure you need to be flexible and go where the campaign goes, but every character aspires to be something. Just let the GM know so he can allow for that aspiration to unfold within the campaign.

Sometimes it's more difficult. If you're playing a Slayer and you need to kill a Giant to attain your next career, but the campaign is currently dealing with a chaos or skaven plot, you're probably going to have to put the Slayer path on hold and go through a basic career or two to represent what you're picking up throughout the current adventure, before going back to the Slayer path when you finally bag yourself a Giant.

>There are zero rules for playing a priest of any of the dwarf gods for example
Do dwarfs have priests?
They have runesmiths and they are rules for them in RoS.

I would've thought so, I mean, they do have gods, so someone must pray to them.

I recommend it, if you have the right players.

Platers who can deal with not being world savers and getting their asses kicked over and over.

Both elves and dwarfs have priests, but not in the same way humans have. There's no greater temple that they owe their allegiance to. There's a hierarchy in the form of a high priest or priestess for large temples but there isn't a Pope like figure like the Fey Enchantress for the Lady worshiping Bretonnians or the Grand Theoginist or Ar-Ulric for the Sigmarites and Ulricans.

But there are actually priests who cast spells, yes?

Just seemed odd to me that there were never and books specifically about dwarf and elf culture in Warhammer Fantasy which could've featured them.

I'm also surprised that there are rules for playing beastmen and skaven, but not for playing greenskins.

For elves, of a sort, though it blurs the line since elves know more about the nature of magic and the world they live in than a human priest would. So the difference between a mage and a priest isn't so distinct to them, as the priests of Asuryan cast blessings on the Phoenix King-elect for his coronation in the flames. Dwarfs, as usual, cannot.

2nd edition ended too soon and became a board game before any elf/dwarf supplements could be written.

>But there are actually priests who cast spells, yes?

Yes, there are.

>Just seemed odd to me that there were never and books specifically about dwarf and elf culture in Warhammer Fantasy which could've featured them.

Dwarfs: Stone and Steel.

The Elves and Halflings never got a dedicated sourcebook, but both got some details in the assorted splats released for WFRP 1ed and 2ed.

>I'm also surprised that there are rules for playing beastmen and skaven, but not for playing greenskins.

There aren't official rules, but the same guys who made fan rules for playing Skaven Characters (which would later serve as the basis for Children of the Rat) did the same for Orcs. And IIRC they were doing Ogres too before everything just...dried up.

The only version of it I've played is 2nd.

It was actually our go-to game in our party for three years. It's a good, versatile system, but there's a lot of room for rebuffs, homebrews, fan updates, etc.

The career system is great for go-to character making, but it both compartmentalizes and limits character development.

2nd edition is basically 1st edition revised.

It's very melee focused but ranged combat can fuck you up really bad since you can't dodge it.
The career system is ancient and clunky. You may want to houserule that so you dont need a dozen bottles of coloured water to switch careers to Charlatan.
I would also recommend to let players buy basic skills not listed in their career for an increased price of 200exp.

Here's a tip:
Since you don't need to murder NPCs for XP (unlike in D&D) you can have them run away. This makes the combat a bit less lethal, if you only need to kill one bandit to convince the rest of them to fuck off.

... D&D has been doing exp for encounter not ended in murder since at least 4e if not earlier.

It's a trivial idea to port anyway.

If you have a decent DM you shouldn't need to murder NPCs in DnD either.

Dwarf priests don't cast spells, at least in later books (stone and steel.fairly old I think)

Elf priests sure, elves are magic sparkle factories.

I wish the basic priest in the core book had no magic options, I feel that fits better. Full on magic priests should be fairly rare and very sought after.

Head on over to Strike to Stun .Net it's the wfrp fan community and sadly much reduced.

Look out for some of the extra work put in like the elf book, and my own contribution the Tilea book.

The Liber Fanatica mags are frankly fantastic.

>It's very melee focused

This is a good idea to keep in mind, even with longbows the range isn't that far and shooting further puts a lot of minus on rolls.

You will rarely be able to stand a whole fight shooting at range (unless your GM feels generous to let you)

WFRP 2e is my go-to system, DM'd for years, play most things with it as basis when homebrewing (although currently using Only War b/c sci-fi).

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2nd edition is the best. Played a few books and it's a blast. As it's the only rpg i've played, I can't compare it to others, but the level of detail is amazing, and the fact that it roughly ressembles our historical medieval world makes it even more interesting.

Pic related, finished 1st volume and am now at the second.

One of my favorite games I've ever been involved in was 2e WHFRP.

I was playing a barber-surgeon who, along with the rest of the party, got levied into defending some Empire city against a chaos invasion. The city got fucked and we were the only survivors as far as we knew, our goal became recovering relics from the chapels around the city hoping it would help stave off the corruption long enough to give the Empire force that would hopefully retake the city something worth saving. At the climax of the campaign we ended up becoming living saints of our respective gods (mine was Morr, got a cool scythe out of the deal) and killing the chaos warlords in charge of the occupation.

Quite a bit more heroic than the usual WHFRP game but very fun. I wish I got more chances to play it.