Warhammer Fantasy 2nd Ed

[salaciouspen]

Just out of sheer, stupid curiosity, are there any fans of the world and system here on Elliquiy?  With Warhammer The Old World supposedly due for release, I've found myself nostalgic for the setting once again.

[Outcast]

I've been a fan of WFRP since the earliest previews of 1st edition began appearing... though I'm probably unusual in being more interested in the historically-inspired "grubby fantasy" idea they were originally pursuing, rather than grimdarkdoomdeath and an endless parade of Chaotic strangeness. 

WFRP 2nd edition certainly had a nice 'feel' to it, and included some very good ideas, though there were some corners of the system that it was hard to believe had actually come through playtesting... and as something of a grognard, I lamented the attempts to integrate the many setting-changes wrought by successive editions of Warhammer Battle. 

[Muse]

  I appreciated it for the pseudohistorical grubby fantasy myself.  Never really got to know it as anything else. 

[salaciouspen]

I like it either way, though admittedly I started to get into it when it was starting to get dark.

[Outcast]

The current (4th) edition has followed something of an industry trend of bringing back on-board one of the original designers and setting-creators, to supervise a version of the game that tries to pick up on key elements that made it a success in the first place.  Thus, there's a lot more focus on 'grubby fantasy' and an embracing of the idea that the Empire is politically and socially complex... and they've even done a "director's cut" version of the epic The Enemy Within campaign.

4th edition's system is more idiosyncratic and harder to wrap one's head around than 1st or 2nd, in some ways, and there are lingering effects of the changes wrought to the Warhammer world in the '90s (orcs and goblins being asexual non-mammals, as one example), but I like what it's trying to do and I think that I approve of most of the design decisions.  2nd edition is in many ways a bit more accessible than 4th or 1st (while 3rd was a strange detour into semi-boardgame play, done by a company specialising in boardgames).

I like it either way, though admittedly I started to get into it when it was starting to get dark.

From the start, part of the 'grubby fantasy' concept was that combat would actually be dangerous, and that any group that opted to fight everything would find itself in a lot of trouble... while the world lacked paladins, Detect Evil spells, and clear divisions between goodies and baddies, thus pushing characters (and players) to make decisions without a clear guide as to what was "the right choice".  But by the late '90s, the guy in charge of producing material for WFRP could write that the only true WFRP game was one that ended with every character either dead or hopelessly warped by Chaos (and doomed to a life of suffering) - with that being particularly true if the GM allowed them to do anything heroic like save the world from imminent doom.

That was never the intent of the original designers, who had been rebelling against the moral simplicity and 'shiny fantasy' of then-dominant AD&D and its rivals, and who wanted to embrace things like meaningful character peril and social and political complexity.  They hadn't set out to create an exercise in misery-gaming where every character was unavoidably destined to suffer horribly (or just die, if they were lucky)... but by the late '90s, the grimdarkdoomdeath side of things had come to be the absolute essence of the game for some fans (and its editor in chief).  In spite of its somewhat post-apocalyptic default setting (in an Empire that hadn't yet finished clearing its lands of an Incursion of Chaos), 2nd edition offered a welcome move back towards rather more hopeful play in which characters could actually aspire to fulfill long-term aspirations and in which victories weren't guaranteed to come at horrific cost: that shift was something I found particularly welcome, and I was very glad to see Green Ronin choose that path for it.

Of course, the setting's most high-profile impact arguably lies elsewhere.    In the process of developing Warhammer (from its 1st-edition Warhammer Battle origins onwards), Games Workshop and Citadel gradually dicovered a visual style and a combination of fantasy-and-firearms that proved highly successful - and was in large part ripped off for use in paid homage to in Warcraft, to even greater success.

[salaciouspen]

Yes, I deeply appreciated the fact that were no real conveniences afforded to the PCs of a WFRP game, such as the aforementioned detect evil spells and some such.  More so, the brutal combat system somewhat made it clear that it was ideally your tactic of last resort; there was much giggling and WTF moments in the first game I played, where everyone was expecting their characters to be heroic.

And good lord, the whole Warcraft debacle...

[Outcast]

Yes, I deeply appreciated the fact that were no real conveniences afforded to the PCs of a WFRP game, such as the aforementioned detect evil spells and some such.  More so, the brutal combat system somewhat made it clear that it was ideally your tactic of last resort; there was much giggling and WTF moments in the first game I played, where everyone was expecting their characters to be heroic.

I suspect that sort of culture shock made a lasting impression on many players who came to it from 'shiny fantasy'.  For me, a great part of the appeal of the setting was that it was one in which the PCs were far more likely to run into residents of a town staging protests over 'mundane' concerns like low wages or the state of the sewers than they ever were to find a magic shop or an adventurers' guild... but that there were still very real threats for brave and determined souls to try to unearth and deal with.

And good lord, the whole Warcraft debacle...

I can remember coming across complaints from WoW fans, upset by the way in which Warhammer was "blatantly copying" their beloved game...

[salaciouspen]

I suspect that sort of culture shock made a lasting impression on many players who came to it from 'shiny fantasy'.  For me, a great part of the appeal of the setting was that it was one in which the PCs were far more likely to run into residents of a town staging protests over 'mundane' concerns like low wages or the state of the sewers than they ever were to find a magic shop or an adventurers' guild... but that there were still very real threats for brave and determined souls to try to unearth and deal with.

That!  Exactly!!  And no quests to hunt oversized rats in basement dungeons (unless you GM was a bit clueless!)  Small details like that make it for me, like how the silver piece is the baseline currency rather than gold (even if you tended to deal in gold after a while), but finding a pile of gold was a real cause to celebrate!  Finding (and not buying!) magic items was as much a moment of elation as it was one of potential dread!  Magic was something you had to respect and merely some mass DPS dealer (lord, do I loathe that term when it's used in context of roleplaying! lol)

Sorry, I'm ranting at this point!

I can remember coming across complaints from WoW fans, upset by the way in which Warhammer was "blatantly copying" their beloved game...

I tend to wish WoW happiness for their game and envy them that happiness, because I cannot tolerate the game in any capacity, which is kind ironic given that I like the first three RTS before the moved to the MMORPG scene at which point I've never gone near the franchise again!

[Callie Del Noire]

I recall my last game my Elven Hunter would up two full classes later including big boosts to Ballistic skill and sneaking. She was a sneaking sniping fiend.

[Outcast]

That!  Exactly!!  And no quests to hunt oversized rats in basement dungeons (unless you GM was a bit clueless!)  Small details like that make it for me, like how the silver piece is the baseline currency rather than gold (even if you tended to deal in gold after a while), but finding a pile of gold was a real cause to celebrate!  Finding (and not buying!) magic items was as much a moment of elation as it was one of potential dread!  Magic was something you had to respect and merely some mass DPS dealer (lord, do I loathe that term when it's used in context of roleplaying! lol)

Though the mechanics of the magic-system in 2nd edition were far (far, far!) better, I much prefer the cosmology and history of 1st edition.  Part of its appeal was that this wasn't yet another painfully generic fantasy world in which dwarves (and halflings) were locked out of arcane magic use, in which elves were better at magic than any other playable race (and had saved the world through its use), and in which wizards formed orders and had officially-recognised qualifications.  But the successive editions of Warhammer Battle that occurred between 1st and 2nd edition WFRP had made the world 'more accessible' - and thus more generic - and all those elements were brought in.

And as they came in, not only did the level of magic use go up (apprentice wizards in 2nd edition start with immediate access to ranged magical attacks and a batch of other spells, for example, while the number of wizards in the setting increased), but the nature of magic itself changed.  In 1st edition, arcane spell-casting was not inherently tied to Chaos - and there were some interesting hints of a complex cosmology underpinning it all.  Necromancy and Demonology were distinct pursuits, but not incompatible with each other; each, however, guaranteed creeping corruption (of different kinds) the more one pursued that path.  And pursuing either of those paths would forever lock a wizard out of accessing elemental magic (and vice versa).  It seemed that each of those three pursuits entailed linking one's soul to another plane / realm of existence, and that the relevant connections mattered in some fundamental ways.

Later in 1st edition, there were some interesting developments with things like Exorcism as a magical speciality: focusing on the boundaries of mundane reality, so to speak, to achieve effects that would 'normally' only be possible for necromancers or demonology - but only to banish or block such entities.  A very limited field, but one that let you do important things without connecting your soul to another realm....

But the scarcity and thus the value of magical items was something I loved.  I've had more than one group absolutely treasure something they found that was permanently enchanted, and viably of use as a weapon: it granted no combat bonuses at all, and didn't do anything active... but it was inherently and permanently magical, and could thus be used to fight things that the party could otherwise not hope to touch.  The mere fact that taking on such entities had now become possible really mattered, to players and characters alike.  I loved that. 

Sorry, I'm ranting at this point!
I tend to wish WoW happiness for their game and envy them that happiness, because I cannot tolerate the game in any capacity, which is kind ironic given that I like the first three RTS before the moved to the MMORPG scene at which point I've never gone near the franchise again!

My own experience of Wow amounts to playing it when it was very new: I had had no previous experience of Warcraft, and knew almost nothing of it.  I enjoyed the MMO, but was one of those weirdoes interested in finding out the story of what was going on and in roleplaying, far more than I was keen to go on raids and pursue the best-possible kit. 

[HairyHeretic]

I only ever played the 1st edition of it. I preferred 40k over WFB though .. think I had a Slayer in the game we played waaaaaaaaaaaaaay back when. Following a glowing sheep around the sewers of some city looking for a 3 legged goblin (the wizard cast light on the sheep because #1 it saved on lanterns and #2 if we ran into the demon that was reputed to be haunting the sewers , the sheep was way more visible than we were and would hopefully distract said demon while we ran away)

[Tantavalist]

I've owned and GMed every edition of WFRP, with the original 1e hardback having been the first "Real" RPG I owned as a child beyond adventure gamebooks. I love the setting but the systems not so much- I've made several attempts to convert it (RuneQuest, Forged in the Dark and Swords of the Serpentine). None has fully satisfied.

There's a lot of good ideas in WFRP 4e and I'd dearly love to get my hands on the final copy of the game rather than the poorly-edited playtest draft they're selling to people right now. It fixes many of the problems that 2e has mechanically but in the process introduces twice as many new problems never seen before.


Still, the best things about WFRP are the ones that rules and numbers can never account for. It's that point where the setting meets the right group of players and it all takes off in a way that doesn't need game mechanics to support it.

[Opale]

I'd love to participate to a Warhammer rpg game, especially with the smut aspect added. :)

It's gritty, scary, and thrilling !

[inkybus]

Yes, Warhammer goes hard!

Age of Sigmar never happened, I don't hear you *LA LA LA LA!*

[Muse]

  I'd love to play too.  :)