Warhammer Fantasy General

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Is Endhammer still being worked upon?

Yes. Work comes in waves when people are interested

Hi, all. WFRP Enemy Within DM here, again.

My group is about to resume (with two new members), picking up from where we left off with Shadows Over Bogenhafen and beginning Death on the Reik. We are also getting two new members, bumping the party size up to six.

I was wondering if anybody with experience playing Death on the Reik had suggestions for improving it? I'm gonna bump up some of the enemy totals to deal with the fact that we have six dudes now (even if one of them is a useless wizard's apprentice).

The party consists of:
Human Vagabond
Human Burgher
Human Wizard's Apprentice
Dwarf Watchman
Halfling Valet
Sixth Character yet to be determined.

Let's see.
Pic related is something I put together collecting the heraldry of as many Reikland families as I could.
It might make the basis of a nice handout for your Halfling Valet, as they probably have Academic Knowledge (Heraldry and Genealogy) out the wazoo.
I can't post blogspot links because of the spam filter, but google "Notes on Rivers of the Empire" and there's a good blog post on river navigation.
Here's a map of Grissenwald: gitzmansgallery.com/maps/Map-City-Grissenwald-1.jpg
River map: gitzmansgallery.com/maps/Map-The-Empire-8-River-Systems.jpg
I was planning to use this as a handout for Kemperbad: bordel.haghn.com/Art/Dessin - Peinture/Miller Ian/a065_ian_miller__village_of_dreams.jpg
There's some more material for Grissenwald and other Wissenland locations here: madalfred.com/articles/Wissenland_final.pdf

They're not superior, they just happen to live longer. How's that foot of yours, Teclis? Banged any good-looking humans lately?

TIL that Marienburg has a war guarantee from the elves. Makes me wonder why they play Bretonnia and The Empire against eachother. It also explains how they could be ballsy enough to secede.

>Full monopoly on trade with Ulthuan
>Receive military aid but don't have to provide it
>All in exchange for a couple of shitty islands

Truly, the Marienburgers are master diplomats. That seems like a tremendously shitty deal from the Elf end.

Those guys kind of look like the new Firmir. I never played Dark Shadows but was it set on Albion? Do you think they planned on turning Albion into a Firmir stronghold or something?

Pic of what I meant.

Dark Shadows was set on Albion but I don't think Fimir were ever mentioned by name.

The Fenbeasts are just swamp elementals.

The elfs are implied to get something out of it that isn't immediately apparent. They are very interested in preserving Wasteland independence, though.

Of course, should Marienburg get attacked while the elfs are dealing with another druchii invasion...

Here's another question - what's the deal with Grey Men? They seem awfully similar to Fenbeasts.

Also, what do you lot figure is the curse afflicting Mousillon, turning it into what it has become?

I often forget that campaign was as late as 2001. 6th edition truly was a good time for WHFB.

I recently realized that I only have one artillery dice, because I only ever bought one starter set from GW, even though I've started with my army in 6th.

Does AoS use artillery dice or do I have to make some panicky last minute purchases to get another artillery dice?

I know I just need one, but I'm worried about losing that dice now. Stupid, I know, but it is what it is.

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I've heard of some daemon princes and greater daemons getting themselves worshiped as deities when they're sure the Chaos Gods aren't looking. And if nothing else, some of the other gods that were set up still technically exist.

It really sucks that GW never did make any options for them, which could have varied up a daemons army. As far as I know, they never even offered their own ideas for customization of daemons for different princes or gods.

It's probably that the Elves want to keep an eye on Old World politics, without having to tie themselves strongly to Bretonnia or the Empire and be pressured into some sort of war. There's also maintaining trade, which they like. And how the cards played out, they can pretty easily support Marienburg independence without pissing off the Empire or Bretonnia that badly, since it's easier to let the Wasteland stay independent than try to force them back into the fold or uphold the claims of some Elector Counts in the Empire case, or conquer it from both the Empire and the Elvish protection in the Bretonnian case. L'Anguille gets pissy though, since they have a big elven lighthouse but elf-sempais don't want to hang out with smelly Bretonnians.

AoS uses pic related as far as I can tell

At least AoS has Flesh-Eater Court. After taking a look at it I wish that WHFB had something similar.

Not necessarily. Marienburg is relatively easy to defend, and elves being elves, they wouldn't hesitate to back out of that deal if push came to shove, although it would no doubt sour Bretonnian-Ulthuan or Imperial-Ulthuan relations, should either of those nations push an actual confrontation that would force the elves to choose whether to honour the deal or to let Marienburg stand alone.

The fact that the Marienburgers likely know this could be part of the reason they play Bretonnia and The Empire against eachother.

Also, note that this is the Elves of Ulthuan. There are many other elves in the world, and the elves have other trading posts, just not official ones like that. I know there's an elven enclave in Bretonnia, in L'Anguille, I believe. We (or at least I) have no idea where these islands are supposed to be, either, and again, knowing the elves, they could be of profound import.

The biggest difference I can see is that the Grey Men seem sentient, while Fenbeasts are simply controlled by those who create them, and need a small stone in them just to make them function.

Best I can theorize is that they were gentler forest spirits corrupted by Mousilion when their forests and lakes turned into swamps. I can't say what the curse is - it might be how Sylvania naturally seems to have a lot of dark magic pooling in it.

I don't like how AoS did the Strigoi in general, really. Turns them from 'monsters at the edge of society with tattered remnants of pride and nobility' to 'randum madmen making everyone else mad and keeping everything fucked up for everyone.'

I rather like the idea of how the Ghoul army works in AoS. It was never really taken to any interesting place in WHFB outside of the Strigoi being cool. If anything I love the theme of them being deluded that they are nobility and a force for good.

I think there's room for both. I've houseruled 'contagious madness' as a blood gift for strigoi line vampires in my WFRP game.

I can't say I agree with your opinion, but I can't hate you for it. I just enjoyed what WFB did with them being a menagerie of the darkest things of the night, and preferred a false or twisted sense of nobility tainted by their fall from grace, rather than an illusion. After all, what's the fun of only having an illusion of nobility if everyone else and their mother knows it isn't real? There's no depth to it.

And I know I'm probably alone in this, but I don't like how ghouls were made more beastial in ET and AoS. They were supposed to be insane and semi-feral, sure, but I'd rather that they were more obviously human rather than mini-Strigoi, and could function as servants and 'courtiers,' and maybe even hold weapons.

Room for both, sure. It's not as if Strigoi in WFB were never affected by madness. But AoS completely shoved out the old idea for Strigoi for this new one, and I can't really forgive that.

For reference, this is what ghouls looked like in 6th edition. No armor and little clothes, but they still stood upright and brandished bones and crude cleavers. They weren't horribly hunched and armed with little more than claws.

I think the problem with this look was that they were too close to Zombies.

much better models than the plastic garbage

That honestly looks a ton better and fits a lot better with the fluff than latter depictions of them like actual monsters. Ghouls are supposed to be corrupted and degenerate humans that have gone mad after engaging in cannibalism.

Those models actually looks amazing. 6th Edition truly was the peak.

They have looked like mutated dog people since the 7'th edition. I do prefer Mantic's plastic ghouls even if they have severely less options.

Those were made in 5'th edition.

To me those models look ugly but it's still nicer than the current ones.

Undead plastic Ghouls look more at home with a Chaos army than with a Vampire one.

Which ones? I think the Mantic ones actually look more like degenerate canibals than GW's ghouls that looks like straight up mutants.

GW plastic ghouls, the ones released in 6th or 7th

Hunchback of Notre Mutation, with SPIKES SPIKES SPIKES RARARARARARARARARA

It might've been that earlier GW was leaving things a little open to interpretation, letting people mix and match miniatures more to their liking. Maybe so you could make a cannibal themed Chaos army as much as a slightly Chaos-tainted Undead one.

But then they decided 'fuck we gotta make all the factions super unique and with different models' or something, I don't know. Either way, I think the old models look far more threatening and interesting than the new ones.

The plastic GW ghouls looks like Lovecraftian troglodytes with pube hair-extensions.

Still better than some models. Though honestly even pic-related would look better with some love and care.

heresy does some really nice ghouls that aren't oop if anybody is looking for an alternative to the plastic ones.

They're by Paul Muller, same person who sculpted the metal GW ones. So they fit together perfectly.

Too many gains for my preference. The Hobbit plastic Goblins makes for good Ghoul unit fillers.

I admit, the one with the baby and the little one with the heart creep me out. But otherwise they look pretty nice, like recognizably human individuals that have gone feral and mad due to eating too much human flesh.

So what happened to Chaos Settra after the first End Times book?

I could be bothered to read the other books because they sounded like shit.

Did he get ridiculous new rules or anything?

Are there rules for characters from Marienburg/Westerland in WFRP2? I know there are for all Provinces in the Empire and all the Duchies in Bretonnia, and also for Sylvanians for some reason, but what about Marienburg/Westerland?

He died.

But seriously, no new rules. He showed up in a bit of later fluff and that's it.

I guess there just wasn't a book it would have fitted in (Sigmar's Heirs should have had a section, really).

Still, it should be fairly straightforward to make one.

>Skills: Common Knowledge (The Wasteland), Speak Language (Reikspiel), Gossip OR Swim
>Talents: Dealmaker, One random talent

Maybe Row? Whatever.

As a hypothetical scenario, what would GW do if Warhammer Fantasy was still around, and they wanted to make a greedy buck and attract Total War Warhammer players to the tabletop?

I'm thinking Sathorael, Advisor, and Helman Ghorst models and rules, at premium price.

My Kniggas!

I just scored an old toolbox full of early 90's integral base models and early slottas, including Chaos Warriors with halberds and shields, assorted orcs, goblins and beast herds, bogenhafen bowmen and empire halberdiers with shields and a slew of heroquest minis including Fimir!

Thirteen quid 'cause it were a friend

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Oh and one lonely Bloodaxe Ork Boy.

Is there any more detailed information on the colonies in Lustria, and perhaps other parts of the world? Like Santa Magritta and Sudenburg and such. There are very old, vague mentions of Bretonnian colonies too.

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Thank you for posting an English version of this. I saw a version of the Spanish warhammer wikia, but it was smaller and, well, in Spanish.

>why were you on the Spanish wiki if you don't speak Spanish

Google translate does a good enough job, and they've often got a bit more detail and a few more pages and pictures compared to the English wikia. Only thing I really have to worry about is a crude translation.

I've always liked Warhammer but about a year before it got axed (so about 2 or more years ago) I really started to get into it.

I bought several armies and started reading as much as I could. I basically switched from 40K to Fantasy (as my main war-game).

I can't really put my finger on why I like Fantasy so much though. I've read LOTR multiple times and Moorcroft but none of them have had the lasting appeal.

Why do you all like Fantasy so much?

>Why do you all like Fantasy so much?
For me personally it was the art. The art and the background did a lot do make the setting come alive in my imagination.
And what set it apart from most other fantasy settings was that it had an interesting mix of influences. Most modern fantasy writing is so derivative it's completely non-descript and generic.
WHFB used very specific folklore, literary and historical influences to flesh out the background. I always felt like it was well crafted and each faction had strong underlining themes that gave them a place in the setting in which their presence made real sense.

Also I'm German, so I grew up on the fairytales of the brothers Grimm, so the Empire being based on ~16th century Germany kind felt like a continuation of that spirit, just with different themes.

Hard to describe really, it just felt right. I hardly read fantasy these days anymore because it all feels like it's made up on the spot.
Fantasy felt like the background has some real gravity to it.

Kinda looks like Wisconsin

It was my introduction to gothic fantasy, except maybe Diablo II. And it lead me other stuff like Moorcock.

What got me into Warhammer Fantasy was the Von Carstein trilogy.

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yup wisconsin

I'm a historyfag, and WFB is heavily based, even if loosely sometimes, on real world cultures. It helps make the world feel more grounded - whereas in 40k, there's a lot more freedom for any kind of planet you so chose, but it all feels kind of insubstantial if you try and look at it too close. Not many settings take advantage of late medieval/Renaissance technology or aesthetics. At one point in a short story, I had to look up what the hell a stirrup pump was - how many fantasy settings would include something like that, instead of having magic firefighters?

It's not exactly breaking any new ground by itself, and in some ways is heavily stereotypical, but how the setting was made for the sake of a wargame, and fleshed out further for an RPG, help make it feel a little unique. Like 40k, it's built on the bones of a lot of very good ideas - but unlike 40k, it hasn't grown inward on itself too much to the point where it's actually begun to distance itself from its roots.

But most importantly, I think, there's a lot of room for a lot of stuff. It's grimdark, but you can also easily have a lot of absolutely normal stuff in it, and even some moments of humor or complete stupidity or silliness. A lot of characters are larger than life, but others are realistically human. 40k does this as well, but as I complained before, it's grown inward on itself, and you lose a lot of this humanizing stuff as you have to make every hero seem cool and every commander seem awesome.

>somebody drew this
>somebody thought this was true

Peasants are shit, Lady says and tabletop affirms.

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>total warhammer is one of the biggest sellers of 2016 on par with games like the witcher and dark souls
>no one making fanart on deviantart
>no one talks about the game.
FeelsBadMan

It is the peasant's lot to labor in the fields and your lot to defend them, not to denigrate them.

Okay, not talking about the game I understand why you'd feel bad about. But deviantart fanart? Do you just see a lot of that for Total War somewhere? Or for any strategy game?

But surely the reason for them to work in the fields is because they are lesser in every respect?

>Wanting Fantasy to be corrupted by Normies.

It's too late for them to save it, let's not kill it any further.

Sheep, swine, and cattle are lesser still, but try to imagine a world without them.

it means that the game is popular somewhat outside it's selling numbers.
Xcom gets a shit ton of fanart and it's a TBS game.

It seems more like a lot of people fell for the marketing hype and bought the game, played it for a few hours then forgot about it. All we are left with are average total war autists.

But sheep, swine and cattle will never outperform a knight and his horse. To expect such on any occasion is folly. Those peasants should have been mown down.

I just don't think Total War is the kind of series to get fanart. Xcom kind of works because you have to build a team. Total War, you get armies of mooks and the occasion general, which in this case can be actual characters, but usually are generic-looking mooks. When you look for Total War fanart in general, you don't find much. You'll probably find people blogging about their adventures or talking about their experiences on forums, but not art.

It's like expecting people to make fanart of Age of Empires II - a very good game, but not one that gets cool art made for it, because there's no strong characters or whatever to attach to.

thats the thing.
All the blogging is being done on a few total war forums and the subreddit.

Everyone expected total warhammer to be the last upswing in fantasy and it seems to be forgotten.

I don't know how else to put it, dude. Fallout 4 got a whole bunch of attention, even though it's arguably not even a great game, because of all the marketing hype behind it, the major company, and the characters in it and fun moments that you could have.

Total War Warhammer is a good game, but it's still coming out piecemeal, and it never got that level of hype or advertisement among a more mainstream audience. The Total War team is not as big as Bethesda, and SEGA doesn't have the weight to throw around.

As far as an RTS goes,Total warhammer has plenty of quotable characters and stuff like that. It's just that the game succeeded wildly (like beyond what CA had hoped).
Yet the actual impact on the internet is pretty mild compared to the amount of games that CA sold.

Fucking Civ which is the same game with cartoony graphics gets more traction with normies.

It's the mud. Mind you, I never got into the TT, sadly, and relatively recently got into WFRP2, but for the longest time I liked Fantasy more that 40k.

Fantasy captures my imagination more. Much of this changed over time and Fantasy became less and less of these things, but: the more limited scope; the more reasonable characters; the more personal connections; the less epically fantastical scenarios and interpretations; the more familiar, relatable tropes; the greater degree of historicity and reasonable historical interpretations that by-and-large fits into a historical narrative supported by the settings own verisimilitude giving a sense of realism; the wealth of factions even within factions, often without clear boundries within the factions; Chaos and religion being very organic and diverse; magic being inherently corruptive and limited. And probably more.

And all of that, coated with a thick layer of mud and that's-not-mud.

Sigmar's Heirs not having a section on Marienburg and Westerland was a fucking travesty. Historically, Westerland was Westerland a whole lot longer than it was The Wasteland, and as far as I kmow, Marienburg is predominantly ethnically and culturally Imperial, being settled by the Jutones, one of the tribes.

And as far as I know, they speak Reikspiel, although much like some Dutch deny that they speak German, I'm sure they'd protest at the accusation.

>elves being elves.
Those fucking knife-ears took some of the best isles.

>Everyone expected total warhammer to be the last upswing in fantasy and it seems to be forgotten.
No idea what you're talking about. I don't play it myself, but it's still huge as far as I can see, even among total normies. It and Vermintide practically carried GW through the Smegmar slump. That said, nothing lasts forever.

Dutch is German in the same way a drunk Scot with a speech impediment speaks English.

This is from the Spanish wikia, so it doesn't fully translate well (thanks Google):

>The natives of the wastelands speak Reikspiel with quick staccato rhythm and intonation that distinguishes immediately of their relatives Empire, stretching vowels and pronouncing sentences in an almost singsong. More expressive than the imperial ones, the inhabitants of Desolate Earth make many gestures to underline their words, although they do not waste saliva like the loquacious tileanos or Bretonianos. Marienburgueses are famous for getting to the point, point by point.

So basically, they do speak Riekspiel, but it's become sort of a different language. Like Dutch and Afrikaans, or maybe less massively German and Bavarian German.

Anyone got the file of the Riders of the Dead?

Mantic's undead line truly shits over GW's. The skellies and zombies are pretty great.

When I make that joke, I'm never sure who I insult more, the Germans or the Dutch. For my next trick, Bavaria!

You're welcome.

I gotta say that I prefer GW's skeletons, but Mantic's skeletons are less brittle.

GW's skeletons look better, especially the skulls.

Out of curiosity, are you playing with 1e rules or adapting your campaign to another edition? I've been shopping around to determine the best edition for me and my group to start a campaign. Leaning towards 2e.

I'm actually surprised that GW hasn't updated their old zombie minis. Compared to the ones they made for the Corpse Cart they look increadibly cheesy.

fucking kill yourself

You first. The GW plastic zombies looks like shit.

Where can i find info on Saponatheim?
I´m making an bögenhafen army.

Afaik, he's running 2e. I believe we're sitting in the same WFRP Discord. Either that, or someone's running surprisingly similar campaigns.

That said, my advice on what ruleset to use is WFRP2. Not only because I happen to play WFRP2 and have not actually played WFRP1, primarily because WFRP2 is by far the closest to what you would likely consider Warhammer Fantasy.

WFRP1 has all kinds of crazy stuff that most fans of Warhammer Fantasy would likely consider odd or out of place, to say the least. There's a ton of good stuff too, and you should absolutely flip through the WFRP1 books for inspiration and cool fluff, but for example, there's no Winds of Magic, dwarfs can be wizards, there's half-elves & half-orks, and so on and so forth. WFRP2 has better and more consistent mechanical support for what most would probably consider the Warhammer Fantasy experience.

Obviously, this is all just, like, my opinion, man.

There's a little information in The Edge of Night and The Lure of Power for 3e
And Shadows over Bogenhafen (obviously).

There are some snatches here and there in the 3e Ubersreik material, I think there was a thread on the FFG forums where they tried to sort out all the family trees and such.
In Vermintide one of the warehouses in the Waterfront mission belongs to the Saponatheims. Not useful, but a nice detail.