Product Review
As you and your friends leave
the warmth of The Sneaky Pig tavern you feel the familiar
hollow emptiness in the pit of your stomach that you
always get on jobs like this. You count the coins
in your pocket in an attempt to reassure yourself
that what you’re about to do is worth it. The
merchant the coins had belonged to a few hours earlier
had looked sick with worry as he'd handed over the
first half of your payment.
“Please, Please, get my
wife and son back. I’ve never even heard of
the amulet they’re asking for, please, you’re
my last hope”
His words still sat uneasily
on your mind, who would have kidnapped such a poor
merchants family? And what was this ‘amulet’
they were willing to trade for human life? Why was
there a nagging feeling at the back of your mind telling
you the merchant knew damn well what ‘amulet’
it was they wanted?
This will be dangerous; you
can feel in it your bones. Oh well, you’ve risked
your life for a few gold coins before, and as you
strap on your battered armour you realise how important
these particular gold coins are. Let’s face
it you’ve got nothing better to do…
This monster of a book contains
all the information you’ll need to get playing.
It is stylishly put together and has been well laid-out
with loads of great artwork throughout the book. Games
Workshop evilly took this game off the shelves for
a while, luckily the wonderful people at Hogshead
Publishing recognised the crime that had been committed
and put it back into circulation. Which is great,
because I think this the finest Roleplaying Game of
all time.
***Note 2003 - Since this article
has been written Hogshead have changed hands and the
Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay Game has gone back to Games
Workshop. What they do with it now is anyones guess
but I'll keep you posted.***
***Note 2005 - Games Workshop's
RPG branch Black Industries have teamed up with Green
Ronin and will be re-launching Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay
sometime this year. Things are looking good and the
proposed release schedule has plenty of new and exciting
stuff on it. Check it out at www.blackindustries.com***
The first reason for my love of
this game lies in the amazing setting. I have frequently
found in the past that games can give you a world
which seems brilliant, but as you start to read more
about it you find bit’s you don’t like
and even some bit’s that put you off all together.
The Warhammer setting on the other hand still continues
to amaze me.
For those of you have never played
Warhammer before and who know nothing about the setting…
prepare for a crash course. The setting is one of
full on fantasy. It is set in the Old World, a place
of bustling human cities where daily life is occasionally
upset by murders, conspiracies and skirmishes with
orcs, goblins, mutants and beastmen. There is an even
darker underbelly to it all though. Evil cultists
are up to something, the dark gods are rumbling and
corruption in the towns and cities runs deep.
The forces of good aren’t
sleeping though, hero’s form various races throughout
the Old World are helping to fight the forces of Chaos.
Humans, Dwarfs, Elves and Halflings are united against
evil and are ready to hunt down its minions wherever
they are found. You play characters that have somehow
become involved in this struggle. They could find
themselves investigating sadistic cults in a city
or leading a wagon train through a dangerous mountain
pass. Whatever happens they’ll soon get roped
into the bigger picture, and this is where the fun
really starts.
The Warhammer setting that is used
in the RPG is not quite the same as the one fresh-faced
young wargamers of today will know. It’s a darker
version of the Old World, where Chaos is more about
cultists and demons than invading armies and where
Skaven are more of a problem than a nation. This doesn’t
mean that all your Games Workshop knowledge is useless
though. The simple fact that you know there is no
such thing as an Elf Troll Slayer or that the aforementioned
Skaven aren’t just large stupid rat’s
that like green rock will give you a head start.
This is another one of the reasons
I like this game so much. Games Workshop is a very
large and successful company and it has a large fan
base (count me in). Think of it, you’re talking
to a Warhammer wargamer about your Vampire game from
last night, all they hear is lots of stuff about clans
and a list of confusing words. On the other hand what
if you had been playing Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay,
they would hear names they recognise, places they’ve
fought battles over and races they may have armies
for. This can be enough to make them utter the words
we all like to hear our non-gaming friends say,
“Next time your playing tell
me and I’ll come along”
Back to the book. It has been broken
up into 8 sections that take you through the various
aspects of the game. First off we have the players
section, which details character creation. This includes
your race, skills, character classes and equipment
among other things.
The Character creation is done with
dice and needs a certain amount of GM rule bending
to make sure a disastrous dice roll doesn’t
wreck a character. This is the only area of the game
I would change. I feel that points systems are a much
better way of putting a character you would like to
play together. I find that letting dice randomly decide
what your good at can sometimes leave you with a character
you don’t want to play. The game redeems it’s
self on the Character careers though. I love the way
that this game treats the job you have taken and let’s
it decide what you’ll get better at and what
you can lead onto. This helps to keep things realistic
and stops carpenters from just wondering off into
the realms of horse archery.
The second section is dedicated
to the GM. It has information on how the system works
and gives you general information on the running the
game. This is also the section where they hide all
the best jobs, the Advanced Character Classes. These
are more specialist professions that the players can
work towards throughout the game and include things
like Paladins, Witch Hunters and Assassins.
The third section is about combat
and I won’t go into any depth, suffice to say;
the system keeps it simple and damage is serious enough
to make you think twice about charging in, but not
lethal enough to hinder all the would-be-heroes out
there. Section four is about magic and the use of
it in the Old World. It’s very comprehensive
and allows you to play anything from an illusionist
to druid. Section 5 gives you some more background
info, this time on the subject of religions and beliefs
in the game. This section is particularly good as
it allows your PC’s to say things like “praise
be to Ulric” at specific points in the game
and hence enhance your gaming (trust me).
Section six is the Bestiary and
it’s jam-packed with creatures you might come
across in the Old World. Each creature is given an
average racial stat line, some info on what their
like and a bit of background on what they do in their
spare time. Section seven is a general guide to the
world. It gives you a bit of history and then a description
of each of the major areas. The last section is a
very good starting adventure called the “Oldenhaller
Contract” which helps to give first-time players
a good feeling of the setting. Bolted to the end of
all this are three useful appendix sections that give
you some sample buildings, a collection of all the
charts and tables from the book and a summary of the
career paths.
All in all I feel that when you
look at fantasy Roleplaying this should be the game
of choice. Dungeons and Dragons is popular, Middle
Earth Roleplay is complicated and Earthdawn is well
thought out, but I feel that this game has something
over all the rest. It could be the character creation,
which makes you pick an actual job rather than a character
type or maybe it’s the well thought out setting
that makes the game so good.
It also has a style of play that
leads you away from the monster-killing-treasure-finding
games and into a dark-fantasy-grim-reality style of
game. Your heroes in WFRP are almost more ‘realistic’
than they are in many other games, and you’re
less likely to find yourself battling your way through
a miscellaneous dungeon for no reason other than gold
and experience.
Unless you already own this book
you should go straight out and purchase a copy. It
is, in my opinion the finest Roleplaying Game I've
played to date (14.01.2001).
So get your armour on, pick up your
big spiky club and let's go and put Chaos to bed.
Reviewed By Jon Simpson |
