| 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
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