Warhammer Fantasy General

Any good rules for Engineers in WFRP? I'd like more concrete rules for making crazy clockwork contraptions and weapons.

So, there's 5 known bloodlines - Lahmians, Blood Dragons, Strigoi, Necrarchs, and the Carsteins - out of a supposed 7; the remaining two being headed by Maatmeses and Harakhte (picture related).

But I also found claims elsewhere that there were 11 bloodlines, and something about a vampire lord called Ahnket, who supposedly fucked off to Cathay and later became a pirate in the Sea of Chaos; but I can't find anything on that guy, anywhere, or what his bloodline would be called.

So, thoughts on the remaining bloodlines? What they could be, what they should be, etc.

He wasn't interesting beforehand either.

He's a nobody that gets pumped up as being "da bestest" without actually doing jack shit until a hamfisted and forced railroaded story.

Wulfrik is intreresting. Sigvald actually has a reason for being Chaos.
Archaos just exists.

I generally make it a Trade (x) test with the cost being 1/2 the standard purchasing price in components. A Poor quality object is a standard test. A Common is made at -10%. A Good at -20%. A Best at -30%.

If the test fails, the object you were making is useless and the components are completely wasted. Not having tools renders the test impossible most of the time, but in some cases it merely causes a penalty.

This.

Undivoded being the special chosen for reasons is lame. Archaon is just handed everything and whines like a toddler.

...

Neferata made a fuckton of vampires. Two sources named them, but most had totally different names between the two. Then her book cherry-picked from both.

She for sure had a second in command that she turns into a cat, a Cathayan she sent east to command the Silk Road, and three who died.

I was thinking about what made factions ultimately likeable and funny and ended up questioning why chaos daemons aren't among them
>large open fluff with numerous possible interactions among themselves and with others
>opportunities for grimderp and contradictory shenanigans
>aesthetic capable of drawing plentiful from the rule of cool/crazyness
they are not in the end so different from lizardmen, skaven, kangz and greenskins after all and yet are not treated with the same regards

Am I wrong in thinking their role as ultimate bbeg choke down a lot of character out of them?
would you treat the factions differently if there was no titular bbeg or "heroes side" and all factions while each having its own distant end goal behaved as mostly non unified warbands with independent or even conflicting ideas?

pic in honour of tzeentch
censored for your safety

The only reason anyone liked him before he won was in comparison to Abaddon.

someone mentioned insects-vampires in araby in the last thread or so, don't know what he was talking about exactly though

Do lizardmen have or believe in an afterlife?
If they believed in reincarnation through the spawnings pools cycles would they be open to ritual sacrifices of their own kind?

Given that the story never continued past Storm of Chaos, I think that the comparison to Abaddon is a bit unfair. I realize that they occupy the same narrative position, and I share the feeling that Archaon is pretty lame and uninteresting, but him failing in Storm of Chaos doesn't really turn him into Failbaddon.

The post-Storm of Chaos setting is actually really interesting, with Archaon on the lose, Chaos in the north, famine knocking at the Empire's door, and so on. It's not Archaon's fault GW never did anything worthwhile with it.

>Aekolds and Sigvalds and Valkias
This I completely agree with. The whole "this guy is super-successful and unites all these disparate and otherwise disunited groups because reasons and rides at the top of the horde because things".

I mean, this goes for any such scenario. When push comes to shove, Sigmar, as a character, in a narrative sense, isn't really that interesting either. The difference is that Sigmar is more in the backdrop of the setting, I think, and the whole thing is a bit mysterious. Archaon pretends to be interesting, but really isn't.

None that I know of. Warhammer Fantasy as a whole isn't really the setting for crazy clockwork contraptions and weapons, and WFRP:s focus tends to be even more "down to Earth". I would think that making crazy clockwork contraptions and weapons would be more for legendary engineers, and thus largely outside the scope of the game.

That said, if you're just talking about rigging up some springs, an auto-torch, some binoculars, maybe make a clock, you know, not robots or autoguns, I guess that'd work. No official support whatsoever, though.

Probably Extended Trade Tests, maybe with some appropriate Knowledge Tests thrown in there.

I have no idea.

So my answer is "Obviously".

>Warhammer Fantasy as a whole isn't really the setting for crazy clockwork contraptions and weapons

....What?

Are you even familiar with the setting? Dwarves, Empire, Tilea... But the point is that its complicated, expensive and rare.

It a healthy dose of DaVincipunk, while not going full cogfop retard. Hell, a lot of the designs are directly ripped from Da Vinci!

...

...

...

The problem with Daemons is the Chaos Gods. Being nothing but a tiny speck in an infinite hateful power that won before the game ever started is pretty lame.

Carnival of Chaos is fun because its Chaos pursuing immediate gratification rather than the longterm goal of destroying everything. Its not mindless either.

Tzeentch Daemons are ultimately blind pawns to schemes they barely understand if at all. Khornates have almost no personality, even his Greater Daemons are generally single-minded.
Nurgle and Slaanesh get to be interesting in stories, but those got forgotten more and more every edition in favor of empowering Archaon and End Times planning.

>questioning why chaos daemons aren't among them
I don't know. I always felt like they were a little bit too "out there", and I always felt having multiple different indistinct Chaos factions just seemed.. weird. I never actually played, myself, but I'd be surprised if nobody shared my feeling that it looked like a clusterfuck, meaning many would be hard-pressed to originally go for them as an army, even if it ultimately wasn't as confusing as it originally appeared.

Because you are obviously entirely correct. Anyone could've done practically anything and just said "It's Chaos, lol". I would've personally loved to have an army of unaligned Chaos Daemons under the control of some unaligned Daemon Prince or Greater Daemon, or just straight-up make up my own Chaos God that they worship or were a part of.

Some people really want this to be the setting that is all about dirty farmers dying to a goblins dirty knife in the dirt of some muddy field, not realzing that it can encompass all sorts of things.

>The difference is that Sigmar is more in the backdrop of the setting, I think, and the whole thing is a bit mysterious.

Yah exactly. It's enough to know that the state religion is based around posthumous worship of the first great conqueror-unifier-king, it doesn't matter what he was like as a person. And when they try to bring Sigmar as a character to the forefront, like saying this guy might be his reincarnation or having the actual gods come to earth and punch things up, it falls flat because there is no character there to examine.

>B-But AoS doesn't sell! GW is dying!

KEEEEEEEEK

thanks for financing the next 20 AoS battletomes grognards

Thats one of the strong points about the setting... Just like real life, you can do both.

One of my favorite little pieces of full if about a huge clockwork display/memorial automaton in the middle of a big Imperial city. It plays patriotic music on basically a giant music box/organ, and has heroic and pious figures rotating around it. If a man signs the scrolling paper at the bottom, it dispenses a couple of coins, and a printed sheet of enlistment, and you're now in the Imperial army. There is official art somewhere....

Pic is the 15thC real life prosthetic arm of Baron Götz "Iron Hand" von Berlichingen. Complex enough to use for both writing, and swordsmanship.

Honest opinions on WHFRP 3E?

Not looking to start arguments or anything, but I have everything printed for that game (with the exception of most card packs and Adventurer's Toolkit) and haven't gotten around to running a game.

From reading the materials, I get the strong impression that the game works well with its published adventures, but may be very cumbersome for improvised play.

The dice by far seem to be the most unique aspect, and I do think the more "tactile" nature of the game would appeal to certain players of mine.

TL;DR, should I bother trying the game out? Tips? Or should I just keep all of this stuff in mint and sell it so some collector 20 years from now?

>40k releases
>40k releases
>40k releases
I mean, I'm sure AoS sells better than dying fantasy, but the relevant question was whether AoS would sell better than a fixed fantasy.

good for GW in proving to themselves that discount boxes and redesigned old concepts sell, a bit sad the fluff will suffer for that.
at least the boat has already sailed for me.

have a nice tzaanuary, flamer-kun.

It was more or less a scam, like Edge of the Empire, designed to jew the customer to death with highly incremental releases of minimal value possible in order to maximize profit and make proxying as difficult as possible.

Unlike EotE, though, it is also a bad game mechanically.

You should take a moment and look at as much of the graph as you can, instead of a relatively narrow snippet.

GW is just getting back to where they were in 2013, and back early in 2005.

>The problem with Daemons is the Chaos Gods.
That might be it.

They would need a way to reverse the cause-effect on most of the actions of the gods and keep them distant, at least from the narrative POV.

The game, even if you are made of money and have all the stuff, just doesn't have the feel or freedom of 2ndEd. It feels far more high-heroics board game than any way a Warhammer RPG.

That all said, some people love it. Most hate it, but there is a small, strong following.

Download all the books and fan expansions for 2ndEd, and sell that 3rdEd stuff to one of the die hards now, who will shell out a mess of cash for extra stuff.

>AoS sells better than dying fantasy
A system they purposefully neglected the demands and interests of, before driving it into the ground for a cash grab.... All so they could make an IP the could copyright everything in.

Oh, and my memory might be shit, but wasn't 2013/2014 about when the End Times happened? So it's reasonable to assume that GW had a sudden rise from the event, and then went downhill afterwards for a while that they are only recently recovering from.

Well that's one way of looking at things, but try considering it from the angle that each of the Ruinous Powers are too vast to be proper personalities, whereas ever greater daemon is a minor god with their own histories, motivations and a lot of autonomy.

Khorne himself is a howling vortex of bloodlust that has throne of skulls I guess and sometimes likes honourable combat but other times only wants torrents of blood (actually he's always both ways). Individual Khornate daemons though might slant more towards Khorne-as-soldier, Khorne-as-serial-killer, Khorne-as-the-horrors-of-mechanized-warfare. I like to go with the fan-fluff that Hashut was a renegade Bloodthirster as a model for how far daemons can stray from the parent template.

Likewise, instead of thinking of Lords of Change as Tzeentch's ministers who blindly implement his Great Plan, consider that the mind of the entity Tzeentch is too inchoate to commit to any definite scheme. Instead it's the daemons themselves, each of them a potential Tzeentch in their own right, who actually form and orchestrate the schemes, and often end up working at cross purposes.

I only managed to acquire my collection this past year, so I wasn't paying much attention to how the game was being marketed/sold.

I do find it odd how the later released books try to make eschewing the components (released until that point) an option, but from just looking at the layout it seems more difficult than using said components in the first place.

And then everything released after that ignores this new option, and only presents these materials as the way to play. Strange.

Any specific examples of poor mechanics?
I haven't played 2e (not that you can really compare them), but am very familiar with the 40k line (which I am aware borrowed heavily.)

yes exactly, WHFB grognard stop buying and they killed AoS and know they rise from their ashes.

>Are you even familiar with the setting?
Lol, yes.

Like I said, "as a whole". They're expensive and rare, made by incredibly talented, exceptional or unique individuals. You said it yourself, they're complicated, expensive, and rare.

If someone said that they wanted to make a spell that could destroy Altdorf, I'd similarly tell them that Warhammer Fantasy as a whole isn't really the setting for earth-shattering spellcasting capable of leveling cities.

But does it happen? Yeah, it happens. And so do Steam Tanks. All.. what? 12 of them, I think? And when dealing specifically with WFRP, much like Battle-Wizards, designing gyrocopters and autonomous clockwork warriors isn't within the scope of the game. By and large, of course.

>A system they purposefully neglected
I know gropey, I know

>the peak is 6th ed

>If a man signs the scrolling paper at the bottom, it dispenses a couple of coins, and a printed sheet of enlistment, and you're now in the Imperial army.

Now there's a concept that has me excited to do my part for the defence of the realm! Time to mechanically enlist my landlord, my wife's lover, my layabout half brother...

Borrowed heavily from 2e, I meant to say.

I could see a use for trying to convert hardcore board gamers into roleplayers, I suppose.

I mean if you have it all it'd be silly not to try it out.

IMO it's basically a good game that could have used a couple more playtesting and editing passes. The core mechanics are way cooler than the old WFRP system, but there are far too many extraneous subsystems.

Unfortunately the revised WFRP 3 we got turned out to be Star Wars. Not much chance of seeing a better take on the Warhammer setting now...

don't forget that GW were flying high on the cash influx from the LotR stuff.
For a while, when the movies were in the cinemas, they did really well.

GW opened all kind of new stores and tried to expand aggressively, which backfired when the hype for the movies died down.

>WHFB grognard stop buying
why did they stop so suddenly?

>The peak is 6th
>Ignoring the while range that drive the sales : 40k

yeah.. sure its 6th..

I never understood the scope of their incomes from lotr.

Goddamnit, where did this one come from?
I thought I had all of these saved, but apparently some have evaded my compulsive collection habit.

Me and my group didnt buy snything since 6th because gw can suck dicks woth their WOW tier shit sculpt

The pound is rebounding you idiot

Do you actually try to prove anything with this picture?
In a setting like this?

I was more referring to "6th" as the period of time in which gw defined the style used in that edition and the parallel 40k one that rides a similar time frame (3rd ed and start of 4th I think), sharing in fact writers, artists and stylistic choices.

>I do find it odd how the later released books try to make eschewing the components (released until that point) an option, but from just looking at the layout it seems more difficult than using said components in the first place.

lol, yes. the game frankly doesn't work without the cards, and the cards are what enable the degree of complexity in the actions, but the backlash from the WFRP fanbase for selling a game that uses what looks like components of a boardgame was immediate and extreme, so they were basically doing damage control for the product's entire lifespan.

Speaking as roleplayer who hardly ever board games, I'm interested whenever I see a game try new mechanical devices and find the automatic disdain towards board game trappings - as if they were something childish and true roleplayers should gradually shed such crutches and aspire to a higher form of play that takes place entirely in the mind - to be both baffling and vaguely embarrassing.

And it's carried by Total War: Warhammer, Vermintide, and others.

It's board-game-y in nature, with special dies and cards, and it doesn't really carry the spirit of Warhammer Fantasy very well, which is already apparent in the writing and the art that it is far more "high adventure!" than the atmosphere most fans want out of Warhammer Fantasy.

For anyone familiar with FFG, it should be obvious that they have a very different idea as to what constitutes a good RPG compared to what Black Industries had. They want things to be increasingly epic and preferably action-packed or "dynamic", and while that doesn't really work very well with the style in WFRP (criticalmiss.com/issue8/jameswallisreplies1.html) it fits excellently with their much more profitable Star Wars RPG.

Which is why a lot of people that hate WFRP3 still love FFG:s Star Wars RPG, even though WFRP3 was basically a testing ground for the (foundationally near-identical) system in Star Wars. Different appeals, different experiences, different systems.

Thats your prerogative, but there are plenty of reasons to have access to basic clockwork fuckery in even low level games, as long as they realize that it may make them a target of thieves, or maybe even fear in the more backwater places.

They would have to have the enlistment coin, and there are guards around it (typically veterans still useful, but that pegleg would slow them on the march).

Nice try, now get to your barracks.

Sudden shift in game focus. It became all about large units and big monsters- which were originally considered centerpieces- now became the norm. On top of this, the huge aesthetic change in the overall product, as well as price hikes.

Dude, there is a tumblr page of nothing but the concept art for most of the races. Google reverse search it

I miss the old "real historic stuff, made beliveably fantastic" look.

The problem is examples.

Almost all Chaos fluff has the Chaos Gods behind it. They appear to have a very tight leash.
Every Bloodletter is a single-minded killing machine with no thought otherwise, Tzeentch keeps his own minions in ignorance. Nurgle and Slaanesh let their Daemons run free, but even then a story begins and ends in the Chaos God.
Greater Daemons have as much importance as the random name of a general in a book.

>I haven't played 2e (not that you can really compare them), but am very familiar with the 40k line (which I am aware borrowed heavily.)

It didn't just borrow heavily. Dark Heresy was originally created by Black Industries, who wrote the entire line of WFRP2. And although Dark Heresy had some issues, it should be apparent for any veteran of WH40kRP how the games got increasingly "epic" as time went on, how the numbers kept increasing beyond any reasonable measure, and how poorly the d100 system does with high numbers.

I don't think FFG ever understood the original d100 system, how you're supposed to use difficulties, and just how much casual input the GM should/must have (Protip: It's actually a lot). And it just kept spinning out of control.

Being familiar with the WH40kRP series is a blessing and a curse when it comes to playing WFRP2, because you make assumptions based on your experience ("I can do a Full Aim for +20, right?"; no such thing actually exists, although any reasonable GM will let you do that, obviously), but you also know how it all fits together, you know how to make quick calls in difficulty, and how Degrees of Success/Failure works, etc.

Personally, though, I must say that since I started playing WFRP2, I think it's superior to all the WH40kRP games in almost every single way. It's got some flaws by comparison, none which are easily fixed (I really think Perception should be a Characteristic, and I think that several skills could be more or less pulled from Dark Heresy) due to the Career system - but the Career system is also WFRP:s biggest strength, and I absolutely love how you slowly build your character if you live long enough, and you might end up not being able to follow a straight path at all, due to circumstance, making you a natural part of the universe in which the character lives, having to evolve "naturally", rather than following an easily predictable path.

Don't forget the shift to centerpieces and hordes when cannons and magic were at their strongest.

I saved 314 images from a tumblr (which is gone now, apparently) and I thought that was all of them.

Reverse image searching just gives me old Veeky Forums threads

>Thats your prerogative, but there are plenty of reasons to have access to basic clockwork fuckery in even low level games, as long as they realize that it may make them a target of thieves, or maybe even fear in the more backwater places.

Well, you can obviously deviate from the themes and/or tones of the game and/or setting as much as you want in any given roleplaying game, so it doesn't really matter much.

The fact that stuff can be changed and "anything's possible" doesn't really change what I said originally though, that Warhammer Fantasy as a whole isn't really a setting for crazy clockwork contraptions and weapons.

They exist, but they're complicated, expensive, and rare. What you do in your games is, as always, up to you.

I think there is a miscommunication here bro. I said those exact words here Unless you're just being a tool, in which case, carry on.

Speaking of crazy contraptions, look what I found in Total Warhammer.

Looks like the semaphore wasn't forgotten entirely after the Enemy Within.

Warhammer can, in both feel and canon, do both of what you want. You're an anus, user.

>wooosh
I'm agreeing with that sentiment, hence the repetition.

> it doesn't really carry the spirit of Warhammer Fantasy very well, which is already apparent in the writing and the art that it is far more "high adventure!" than the atmosphere most fans want out of Warhammer Fantasy.

Yo, have you looked at the covers of WFRP 1st or 2nd edition lately? High adventure with an extra large helping of blood, guts and grime has always been one of the game's foremost promises. Judging by the many adventures and campaigns throughout its publication history it's always leaned towards high action, with a heavy helping of combat (not as much as most D&D modules, but that's an extreme case). And your linked image reads like the climax of one of the later Gotrek and Felix novels - the kind of thing that'd reasonably happen in a high-powered WFRP campaign if your group wanted to play through your own 'End Times' scenario.

Now it's ALSO the mainstream fantasy RPG where a college dropout is a useful starting character because of their reading and alcohol handling skills, but you know, you wouldn't want to pigeonhole the game too much.

Well, the IP is finished and done with and half of it was crap anyway. Use the version of Warhammer that best suits your gaming.

It's not about "muh mindgame", it's about restriction of action and choices. Cards and "abilities" like that feel extremely artificial, especially if you are used tp the relatively free-form of WFRP1-2.

>I saved 314 images from a tumblr (which is gone now, apparently) and I thought that was all of them.
user who posted the images here at the beginning, I discovered the site (darkspacesomething) by a link of one of the images posted the 9th age forum, the link led to nothing at the time I found it (roughly a week after the original post) and could only try to forcefully access the locked tumblr site with random passwords and check online if there was a full collection of saved and rehosted images (the only decent one was on an empire themed forum), until at some point the tumblr page opened again and was able to save all pics, here are the fantasy ones
m.imgur.com/a/k3bQl
m.imgur.com/a/U7gBf
m.imgur.com/a/Lk3H2

see if there are images you're missing or if you have fantasy images from that site that don't appear here (which may either not be from that site or been added in the small time frame between my checks of it and its last closure) and if you can, post them.

Clockwork horses, dude.

Admittedly that's when I thought they were starting to take the piss a bit, and I like to think the woman that made them robotic steeds got burned for blatant witchcraft and daemon-smithing after a cursory investigation.

The tones of WFRP2 and WFRP3 are completely different. The art is very different. The adventures are very different. Your own End Times scenario and a Gotrek & Felix novel does not change that.

You will be a dirt farming peasant from a bretonni backwater, and like it! Guns are witchcraft!

Oh, fantastic, thanks.
I had most of them but it looks like I missed a batch somewhere.

Well if you say so, I can't say your impressions and experiences are wrong, but I find it hard to see how you'd arrive at that conclusion. Like from the outset, you have rules for adjudicating generic actions and manoeuvres that your character hasn't learned a special trick for.

Like being able to pull out pic related as a special move with quantified effects doesn't limit or diminish anyone else's Intimidate skill, it's just one reliable way of making being intimidating work for you in a combat situation.

Like so many things in WHFB the signal towers were based on a real thing.
They only used wooden planks instead of giant metal skeletons though.

>The tones of WFRP2 and WFRP3 are completely different. The art is very different. The adventures are very different.

The art is the same! Black Industries and FFG had different artists on call but in content they're exactly identical!

The fluff is the same! The adventures, stripped to their pure narrative content, are the same shit as ever!

On these terms there's a much bigger discrepancy between 1st and 2nd edition, when the setting changed considerably.

There are elements of Dark Heresy like initiative and Unnatural Characteristics that work well but wfrp 2nd is much tighter.

By the time 40k gets to Deathwatch keeping up with rules is a fucking chore.

There's an excellent novel called 'Pavane' that features a semaphore system heavily. I'm pretty sure it was this novel that inspired The Clacks in Discworld and the semaphore system in The Enemy Within (well, that and the real systems).

One version also had a cover by a certain Ian Miller that might look somewhat familiar.

>deepest lore

I'm intrigued but the summary blurb makes it sound like some patriotic britwank.

>In the year 1588, Queen Elizabeth was assassinated. That single tragedy set off a whole series of events, resulting in the Spanish Armada's defeat of England and subsequent demise of Protestantism. Now it's the 20th century, and the Church of Rome reigns supreme. People live a pastoral existence of guilds and farming, with technology held back to the level of the steam locomotive and primitive radio. Still, science cannot be held back forever...a revolution is building.

There is an element of that in the overarching theme of England's rebellion against the Catholic church.
But it's well-written, so it doesn't come off as masturbatory. At least it didn't to me.

You can also see some themes that GW ran with in 40k, such as technological stagnation and theocracy. It's good anyway.

If Spain had conquered England, it probably would have had a rather large impact on future history.

However, really it's just a hook for a story he was writing anyway.

why does the empire prefer signallers to letters by bird?

They use both but the towers are a fast way of communicating with major cities.

It's vastly more reliable, and faster over long distances, at the cost of investing in constructing and manning the towers. The upside of homing pigeons is you can release them from anywhere without any infrastructure (but you won't get a reply).

Semaphore is much faster and more reliable. A pigeon can maybe travel twice as fast as a messenger on horseback. Historically, the first message from Paris to Lille made the distance in half an hour - approximately 1,380 kilometres an hour.

The downside is the cost of building and maintaining the towers. Also, it's really only suited to short messages like military intelligence or the price of grain. If you want to send a novel, you'd need to put it on a mail coach.

You'd figure Dwarfs would have telegraph. Or runes that glow and dim with a twin elsewhere.

A Gyrocopter can probably take a message pretty quickly.

Trouble with a signalling system is that many of the Throngs are no longer connected. The interconnecting tunnels are infested with goblinoids and the messages could be intercepted.

>You'd figure Dwarfs would have telegraph. Or runes that glow and dim with a twin elsewhere.

>implying their telegraph wouldn't consist in repeatedly hammering a solid metal bar passing in underground tunnels with a large object and perceive the vibrations from the other side by ear or sensitive beard-wishkers
I must admit it sounded less reasonable in my head

especially when thinking about the circumstances in which this kind of technique may have developed: mines cart rails

Help me lads. Why does no other setting give me the same feeling as the Warhams does? Nothing seems to scratch the itch, no game captures my imagination so even technically 'better' games.

I'm currently trying to cobble some sort of campaign/skirmish game using some old Orcs and Perry HYW figures for Bretonnians. I could do with some ideas for cool junk in general, but I lack bits and the Perry figures are much finer than most I have available.

So he's Trump?

>Why does no other setting give me the same feeling as the Warhams does?
It was aesthetic based, not story based.

It's difficult to find settings that are born and developed the same way.

>was

Actually, yes.

>Vague ideas
>Driven 100% by emotion
>"We're going to build a new setting, amd make Chaos and Sigmar pay for it."
>Slavs love him
All he needs to do is appoint a Dwarf treasurer.