Review: Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay

It was a sunny afternoon when I came home from work to a package that looked like it had been mauled by wild dogs. It was heavy and I wasn't sure what exactly it was. Reading the return address it clicked. Ah yes, my review book from The Gaming Outpost.

So I opened it, Warhammer Fantasy Role-Play. My first impression, it's big. The town I grew up in had a phone book half its size. It weighs in at 366 pages in the standard 8.5 x 11 book. My only exposure to Warhammer was the ghastly expensive tabletop miniature game. I knew little to nothing about the actual game world. I will admit right now that in general I am not a big fan of fantasy settings. So rather than boring you with minute detail, I will tell you what is different in this game, what sets it apart from other fantasy settings.

THE GAME

First, a little history. This game was originally produced by Games Workshop as a spin-off to their miniature combat game. That was in 1986. The RPG was then separated from the Games Workshop entity and produced by a splinter company. This company eventually closed in 1991. But, because the gaming industry is a strange place, Warhammer Fantasy Role-Play got a second chance. Hogshead Publishing republished the game in 1995. The rules were printed with no revisions aside from published errata. This is in essence still the first edition of the game.

The basic game premise is the following. Approximately ten thousand years ago an ancient race came to the game world. This race now referred to as "the old slann" began to tinker with the climate and life of the planet. They started with the elves, moving them to an isolated environment, and watching them develop, the old slann then moved their attention to the dwarves, then humans. Before the old slann got to far with the younger races (humans and halflings) they had an accident, and not a "spill your drink and move on" accident. In order for the slann to travel across the universe to and from other worlds, they had built two very large portals. These portals were powered by the highest levels of technology and magic. They somehow collapsed, spilling spirits and matter from the chaos of space and other time. The old slanns on earth could not combat what they had unleashed. The powers of Chaos warped creatures into goblins and beastmen and threatened the existence of all the normal life on the world.

So you have an otherworldly taint of chaos roaming around in what is essentially a historic medieval/renaissance Earth backdrop. This earned the game two billings. The first is "the British answer to Advanced Dungeons & Dragons". The second is "The original dark fantasy". In my opinion, Warhammer Fantasy Role-Play is both of these things. The setting material is very detailed. Where most fantasy games try to invent things from scratch, Warhammer FRP borrows from history. The Empire of the old world is very much the Roman Empire at its height; the northern barbarians of the old world are the Nordic Vikings. This gives a familiarity to the world without needing a slew of sourcebooks covering fabricated history and politics. Another effect of keeping to historical fantasy is that the number of critters is kept down. The taint of chaos mutates existing life, so you don't get hordes and hordes of fantasy creatures filling the pages of future supplements.

THE GOOD

Now in amongst all the mechanics there are a few gems that are very much worth mentioning. The first major one is character creation. WFRP has a system that I have never encountered before. There are four classifications: Rogue, Warrior, Ranger and Academic. The character picks one then rolls on a massive table. This becomes the characters career. These careers don't end with character creation. Each career has a certain advancement plan. This means that a character can only advance attributes or acquire new skills that are in their current career. In order to keep advancing, a character must keep changing careers. But, changing careers costs experience, and each career only branches into a handful of other careers. The path from Mercenary to Wizard is a long one.

The careers have a curious effect on the magic system. A player cannot start the game as a full wizard. They must first complete the Apprentice career (which does have access to the most basic magic). The progression of magical learning is slightly different than some fantasy games. The player would move from apprentice to wizard. From the wizard career you could try to complete it or jump to a specialist. With Warhammer a wizard learns generic magic but in order to have access to more powerful magic, such as Illusion, Elemental or Demonic magic he must advance into a specialist career.

This amount of career jumping is costly, so it results in keeping players from obtaining too much magic in a hurry. Again this keeps in with the historic slant of the game, magic is rare and costly to learn.

The main book includes a great deal of setting material. From the mainbook you get the basic evolution of the main races and what the Old Slann did to alter that evolution. The history goes on to detail how the race first encountered the powers of Chaos and the other main races. Once you have that milling about in your head, the book then goes on to describe the geography of the old world, the old world being the current domain of the main races and very analogous to Europe. The world map is further broken down into kingdoms/areas of influence where the reader is given information on major cities and politics in the area. If that still isn't enough, the setting material goes on to give a basic lesson in settlement patterns and travel in the Old World.

THE BAD

I took into consideration that the mechanics were originally published in 1986, but I still think it is far too bloated. The first example would be the character attributes. There are 14, some based on percentile, some based out of 10. This means in different attribute tests, different mechanics are used.

This was a time when rulebook meant rulebook. Need to know the ramifications of flying creatures in combat? Page 129 there is information on attacking ground to air, air to air and combat with flying mounts. Heed the rules, there is only one way to do things from the creators' stand point.

And speaking of combat, the system does read like a giant flow chart. A typical attempt to hit something looks like this: roll initiative, roll skill, if hit roll on hit placement chart, check wound level, if wound attribute = 0 roll critical table, if critical roll on critical location table. The more wounded something gets the longer it is going to take to resolve each round. There is however a short cut chart for lesser creatures that takes out everything after the wound attribute check, they either live or die on that chart.

So in my opinion, the system for this game is very mechanical. Anything you wish to do is resolved through X steps, rolling dice and checking a well laid out table in most steps. I could suggest just using the setting for another game, but that means also removing the career mechanic, which adds a certain uniqueness to the game. You could convert the careers, but that means rewriting some 100 different careers just to use a new mechanic.

My other major complaint with the book is the overall layout and organization. Nit picky perhaps, but it does breaks up the way you read this book. The book starts in 3 column layout, jumps to 2 column and jumps back in different location, it even changes mid chapter at one point.

Being rules heavy, the book is not as user friendly as it needs to be. Careers can be found in three different chapters (character creation, GMs section, Magic). As another example, the distance a noise travels is listed under the Listen skill but does not seem to appear anywhere else in the book. A pile of minor flaws like this can hinder the usefulness of the book as a tool.

The art in the book is good, but on many pages it seems inserted as an afterthought only to fill the unused space on the page. My suggestion to publishers: If a page runs short, leave it alone, do not insert a 1 inch by 2 inch picture, its hard to make out what it was.

THE VERDICT

This game is a fantasy genre game that would be considered "low" fantasy because it tends to leans towards realist rather than fantastic and magical. The elements of the Old Slann and the Chaos give it a dark brooding feel, that you could almost call horror. The main races are eventually doomed to be overcome by Chaos, a tragic setting.

If you want a system that is procedural with lots of dice and charts along with this setting, then this book is for you.

For all my complaining I would say that this book is a good buy at 30 dollars, mostly because it is a complete game. In one book you get the basic rules, setting material with a chapter on religion, along with adequate bestiary as well as a starting adventure. A complete fantasy game all under one cover.