WFRP: a look at the history of the game

Here's a tip of the hat to the splendid site known as Kalevalahammer. Jackdays mantains many interesting projects, and one is to list some of the history of Warhammer.

Click here for history!

I haven't checked it for accuracy, but knowing Jackdays there are good odds of it being spot on accurate. It would be cool if we could get stuff like the WFRP mailing list, launches of prominent fan sites and the publication of individual issues of Warpstone in there too!

/Magnus

FAL Tip: Cool links (3)

I stumbled on this link the other day. It's a page of illustrations from japanese childrens' books, depiciting monsters of all kinds. While they are decidedly asian in theme I found that several of them could easily be reimagined to fit the WFRP world.

Japanese monsters galore!

/Magnus

WFRP: Signs of Faith is in the shelf

Yesterday I picked up Signs of Faith. It looks great, as do all FFG:s WFRP boxes, and I've started browsing it. The first thing that jumped at me was the mention of several places and people in Altdorf, so I'd better get cracking on updating the map.

The piecemeal approach of WFRPv3 have drawn its share of criticism, and initially I also found it frustrating that the information published was so scant. But after looking through Signs of Faith, I realise that this is actually something I could have the time to digest, as opposed to thick books with dense text. So there might be an advantage to this format that I have previously overlooked: it fits better with the time I have to read RPG material these days.

The lack of nice and cool maps is still a problem with all official WFRP stuff, though.

/Magnus

WFRP: The times they are a changing

The world is ever changing. There is no solace in the belief in the uncorruptibility of the laws that govern our bleak existence. Now that I have finally been allowed free from the clutches of the Witchhunters, I sit down to review my notes. And it is all very baffling. I find references to events I now know nothing about. It is as if the history of our Old World is being rewritten in front of my very eyes.

The laws of nature, the nature of magic, it seems as if they have all been changed.

Was it all a dream? Did a storm of chaos rage across the lands, or was it just a breeze of malcontent blown out of all proportions? Maybe it is as they say, that the invasion was merely a ruse, a conspiracy to strengthen the Emperor's grip of the provinces. But what does it matter? It now seems but a dream, an image of the past that keeps changing depending on the whims of the powers that be and the state of my sobriety.

Shall I cling to the past or embrace the present? No doubt I will be branded a heretic whichever path I choose to tread. This decision weighs heavily on my mind, as heavy as the snow that engulfs our fair city of Altdorf. Everything is white, and maybe this is the time of year when the capital is at its most beautiful. The filth and the muck, the dirt och the dreck, all is covered in soft and cruel snow.

Soon the year will be at an end, and everything will start anew. What will I do then?

Adolphus Altdorfer
Festag, Ulriczeit 27, 2521 IC

WFRP: Tilea for WFRPv2 - by the fans, for the fans!

A week or so ago, the long awaited fan produced book on Tilea was finally released! It can be downloaded from the Liber Fanatica web site, and weighs in at an impressive 88 pages. So point your web browers at the link that follows and download this impressive effort! Myself, I recommend the colour version for reading on a tablet or computer of your choice and the black and white version for printing.

The book is for WFRPv2 but contains information of use to any fan of any edition of WFRP!

Click here to download Tilea: Spears of the Maiden!

/Magnus

WFRP: Graeme Davis is back with WFRP

Just a short note to ... erm ... note that the author for the upcoming WFRP adventure The Edge of Night is none other than Graeme Davis! 

Read more about it here!

It will be very interesting to see what he will make out of the current WFRP rules and setting, and I have high hopes that it will harken back to the early WFRP pieces penned by the esteemed mr Davis.

/Magnus

WFRP: Best of the Fans (8)

This time around I'm going to highlight a WFRP fan for the second time. The first time was when he was awarded with a Best of the Fans post for his immensely cool WFRP fan site, Kalevalahammer.

This time around I'm going to give a shout out to Jackdays for his map of Nuln, which he keeps updating and releasing to us fans all over the world. It is a dashing companion to my own iAltdorf project, and fans of any edition is bound to find it very useful if you plan on running a game in Nuln, like e.g. Forges of Nuln.

And remember that the best payback a fan can get is if you give feedback on his work! So get thee hence to a WFRP forum of your choice and start telling Jackdays that his map rocks and pummel him with awesome ideas!

/Magnus

WFRP: A Small But Vicious App - iPhone app for WFRPv3 released

In a surprise announcement a couple of days ago Fantasy Flight Games released an iPhone app for WFRPv3. More info can be found here.

It's only a couple of dollars, and I'm downloading it as I write this. I'll be back with a review shortly.

/Magnus

WFRP: The Gathering Storm review at RPG.net

Recently I laid my hands on The Gathering Storm for WFRPv3. It looks fabulous, but I haven't had the time to look at it thoroughly yet. Some chap at RPG.net has written an interesting review, though.

Read the review here!

/Magnus

Don't Pay the Ferryman

The people of Altdorf enjoy telling ghost stories, both as entertainment and as sincere warnings of the horrors of the unknown. The Niederhafen Pike is one such legend, and this is often accompanied by the fable known as Don't pay the ferryman. The source of this ballad is unknown, but it is easy to imagine that it has some truth to it, given the amount of ferries that cross the Reik. There are bound to be incidents, even if they are more mundane than the legend makes out.

The popular and skilled lute player and folk singer Christoph Von Kleinestadt has followed up on his success at the taverns and bars in the docklands, and has written another catchy tune, inspired by the old legend of the sinister ferryman.

It was late at night on the Volkerweg
Speeding like a man on the run
A lifetime spent preparing for the journey 

He is closer now and the search is on
Reading from a map in the mind
Yes there's the ragged bridge
And there's the boat on the river 

And when the rain came down
He heard a wild dog howl
There were voices in the night - "Don't do it!"
Voices out of sight - "Don't do it!
Too many men have failed before
Whatever you do

Don't pay the ferryman
Don't even fix a price
Don't pay the ferryman
Until he gets you to the other side 

In the rolling mist then he gets on board
Now there'll be no turning back
Beware that hooded old man at the rudder 

And then the lightning flashed, and the thunder roared
And people calling out his name
And dancing bones that jabbered and a-moaned
On the water 

And then the ferryman said
"There is trouble ahead.
So you must pay me now" - "Don't do it!"
"You must pay me now" - "Don't do it!"
And still that voice came from beyond
Whatever you do 

Don't pay the ferryman
Don't even fix a price
Don't pay the ferryman
Until he gets you to the other side
Don't pay - the ferryman!

Adolphus Altdorfer
Wellentag, Sommerzeit 20, 2521 IC

Here's the video of the song performed live! It's kind of a silly song, but I love it. Too bad I couldn't find the original video, with De Burgh dressed as a vampire!

/Magnus

WFRP: The Winds of Magic

As I'm getting up to speed with what's happening in the WFRP sphere, I noticed that FFG has announced the supplement on magic for WFRPv3.

Read a little bit more about it here.

Sounds cool and all, but the info is still a bit sparse. I'm a bit curious as to how they're going to cram everything hinted at into one of those slim books they use for the rules. The other components will be top notch of course, and it will all look fabulous.

A certainly seems as if FFG has adopted an agressive release schedule, now that they've gotten WFRPv3 on track. We have the core rules, the game master toolkit, the adventurer's tookit, a campaign and extra dice. Quite an achievement, I say.

/Magnus

WFRP: Warforged in WFRP

A while ago a poster on one of the discussion boards I frequent, which one eludes me at the moment ... maybe at ENWorld ... anyway ... a poster asked how to incorporate the Warforged from the Dungeons&Dragons campaign setting Eberron as a player character race in WFRP.

As to be expected when it comes to roleplaying gamers, the poster received some ... not so useful suggestions. But there were some who stepped up to the challenge and tried to find an explanation as to how the Warforged would fit in. I was among those brilliant .. ehm ... chaps who tried to fit a rather alien race concept into WFRP.

To start with, what is a Warforged, anyway? This is what Wikipedia has to say about the subject:

""The warforged are a race of living, sentient constructs, superficially similar to golems. Warforged are composed of a blend of materials: predominantly stone, wood, and some type of metal. In Eberron, they were created by House Cannith in magical 'creation forges' to fight in the Last War, based on technology recovered from Xen'drik. When the Last War ended, they were given their freedom at the Treaty of Thronehold. Though they have free will, whether they have a soul is not known with certainty; they can be resurrected by spells designed to restore human souls to life, but, unlike humans, never remember anything of their experience in the afterlife after such an event.

While they have no biological sex, warforged may adopt a gender role as part of their individual personality. They do not age as the other races do, and it is not known what effects time will have on them. It is generally assumed that, like all living creatures, their bodies must experience degradation over time. Like other races, warforged may take levels in any character class."

So that's the rub. And someone ... Emerikol maybe ... wanted to incorporate this into his WFRP campaign. So how would I do it?

If ... and that's a pretty big "if" ... I would introduce Warforged in my WFRP campaign, I'd make them of dwarf origin, and look into dwarfen belief in ancestor spirits. The Warforged could be reborn dwarf souls, incarnated in metallic bodies to protect the Halls of the Ancestors, and maybe tasked with carrying out dangerous tasks outside the halls. They would be very rare, and most people would mistake them for armoured dwarf warriors.

DaveTheGame chimed in with a great idea:

"That's pretty awesome. You could call them "The Grudgekeepers" and have them inscribed with an ancient grudge in ancient Dwarven, with an eternally preserved Dwarven spirit who keeps that grudge going."

Awesome. The grudgekeepers would be a well kept secret though, and they would rarely venture into civilised parts of the Empire without a dwarven guide to speak to the humans and halflings. Such a guide and a grudgekeeper would make a good backbone for a more traditional party, as they recruit other races and classes to get the grudge dealt with.

A grudgekeeper would be fully armoured at all times if possible, and if not possible, swathed in ancient dwarven leather garbs and a cloak. And a crazy hat and face mask like V in V for Vendetta. In one way, he's the ultimate Grudgekeeper.

"He was horribly scarred in a fire, so he can't show his face without scaring the children".

Alternatively I would go the golem route. That would in WFRP terms mean that an alchemical process was used to bring dead matter to life, and some sort of spark of chaos to give them sentient life. They would be hunted by witch hunters, and would have to hide from the rest of society, unless captured and bound to perform tedious and dangerous work. Read Feet of Clay by Terry Pratchett for more inspiration if you go this route.

Well, that's it. I think The Grudgekeeper is a pretty good way of introducing Warforged from D&D into the WFRP world.

Any other race from another game you readers would like to have adapted to WFRP?

/Magnus

FAL Commentary: Moving out of the comfort zone

Over the last year or so, we've been running a lot of Dungeons & Dragons 4. A lot. This means even Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay has taken a back seat to the behemoth the is D&D4, and the most startling thing to me is that I am the DM.

Why is this so startling? My perspective is one based on conflicting experiences.

My favourite RPGs are Call of Cthulhu (any edition) and Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay (v1 and v2, we haven't tried v3). It's all great fun.

I primarily run these games for my group, and have a somewhat similar style when doing so. Lots of social interaction, investigation, few combats, abstract battles not using minis, event based plot progression and so on.

The kind of adventures where my group chose not to play D&D. That's what I do best. I ran Tomb of Horrors, and it sucked. I ran Iron Kingdoms, and it turned into WFRP.

But the allure of D&D is always there. I've played D&D since 1984, and have fond memories of the Dungeons & Dragons Expert Set opening up outdoor adventuring and exploration on a scale I hadn't seen before. So I was a player in D&D BECM up to level 26, then in Dragonlance and Ravenloft and other classic stuff. Good stuff and bad stuff.

When D&D4 was released, we decided we wanted to try it. One DM bravely took Keep on the Shadowfell and ran us through it. The resulting experience nearly tore our group apart. We couldn't agree on how to play the game, I hated it, and the tactical parts of it were uninteresting to me. Counting squares ... argh! So I said that I would never play D&D4 again. And some said they'd never play any previous edition again, because they loved the elements I hated in D&D4. So no D&D for us.

It was a strange experience. So we went on to Dark Heresy, with another GM. Then there was a shakeup due to working schedules, and we lost our  GM. So what to do ...

I stepped up and ran a WFRP arc that was nigh on perfectly executed both by me and the players. It was loads of fun, and it had everything I love about playing roleplaying games. But it took its toll on me, and when we wrapped up the seven sessions, I was a bit burned out on deep and complex plots. And I wanted to try something different, move out of my comfort zone, to see if I could learn something that made my WFRP games a lot better. Things can always be approved, is my belief.

So I bought Dungeon Delve. We created new PCs. I concocted a flimsy campaign premise, and then we dived into it. Very much focused on tactical combat and character advancement. I was planning on running a few of the delves while we were deciding on what to do next.

Sitting on the DM side of the screen totally changed my opinion of the game. I loved it. And the players loved it. We had had our internal flame war on play styles, expectations and pros and cons and all that, and we emerged with a greater understanding of what we wanted from the game.

The delves segued into Scales of War, and then into Revenge of the Giants. Even though I'm still having trouble adapting my style to that which fits D&D4 best, the players are psyched, and we are chugging along. Before, we would change games every 7 or 8 sessions (we play once a week), but now we soldier on. D&D4 scratches a lot of itches that my players like to have scratched, while still being fun for me to run.

It doesn't play like CoC or WFRP. And for me it shouldn't. I just need to learn or even relearn how to make the game more D&D:ish, and drop some conceits I've adopted from running other games. To make the experience more like what my group thinks of as D&D. It's all possible within the rules, I just have to work a bit harder to bring it to the surface, since I'm entrenched in my primary style of game mastering.

So the short of it. I understand and respect the opinions of those who feel D&D4 is not a game for them. I've been there myself, and I hated the game. At the same time I think I understand the opinions of those who feel D&D4 is their kind of game. That's where I am now. At the same time, if someone said "show me your best game running skills" I wouldn't pick D&D4, instead opting for WFRP.

Strange that, to find conflicting views on the game, all wrapped up in one single gamer.

/Magnus

WFRP: Requests for translation

I have over the years received quite a few requests for translation of the iAltdorf map into other languages. French is the most requested language, and I have been in contact with some chaps who had a plan to do the translation, but I lost their e-mails.

So I'm posting this to make a general call out to anyone who wants to translate the iAltdorf map into their own native language. Drop me an e-mail, and I'll send you the files.

What you need is basically Illustrator CS3 or later, or a vector based illustration tool that is compatible with the Illustrator CS3 file format. And a freaking lot of time on your hands ...

Don't underestimate the endeavour, it's a lot of tedious work. Using Find and Replace will get you a long way, but then you will have to manually adjust every single name plaque in there. And there's a lot of them, maybe as many as a thousand ... since all locations are repeated twice.

If you want to give it a shot, you're welcome. Drop me an e-mail, and I'll make the files available to you.

/Magnus

WFRP: A counterpoint review of WFRPv3 at RPG.net

Idle trawling of the web for information and reactions to the latest offering of WFRP from FFG turned up a few reviews. This one is a counterpoint to the largely positive review I posted yesterday.

Dan DeFazio's capsule review of WFRPv3.

I feel that this review is not as well thought out as the previous one, and when it comes to looking at the setting the reviewer compares WFRPv3 to WFRPv1 as if WFRPv2 didn't exist, instead of noting that v3 actually is a step back from the heavier WFB influences that informed the design of v2.

Still, it is an honest review, and the reviewer clearly states that he prefers WFRPv1, and for that no one can fault him.

/Magnus

WFRP: A comprehensive review of WFRPv3 at RPG.net

Yesterday I stumbled upon a very comprehensive review of WFRPv3. The review is particularly interesting since the reviewer preferred WRFPv1 over WRFPv2, due to the sparsity of setting info in the latter. I highly recommend reading it.

E. Long's review of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 3.

Here is the same reviewer with his comparison of WFRPv1 and WFRPv2.

/Magnus

FAL News: Deathwatch RPG announced

In a surprise move FFG yesterday announced the Deathwatch RPG, the third installment of the WH40kRP line.

Read more about it here!

The reason I am surprised is that the timing seems odd. I was expecting it a bit later, after Rogue Trade picked up steam and got a few more supplements added to the lineup. But maybe this was needed after those pictures from GW revealed a bit more than they should last week.

Still, I think it is tremendously exciting, and I'm hoping that I can find some energy to run a Dark Heresy/Rogue Trader/Deathwatch crossover some time next summer. Given I get some interest from my players for such a setup of course.

/Magnus

WFRP: iAltdorf update 1.2

Today one of the most significant updates to the iAltdorf map is revealed to the public! I've gone out on a limb here and added a completely new layer called Elevation. My hope is that this will add a new dimension to the map and encourage people to look at Altdorf as being a three dimensional place rather than a flat surface.

I've also revised the Reiksport area so take a look at that. Please note that I am still operatin under the WFRpv2 assumptions on population. I don't know if that will change as more info is gathered, but I suspect that some changes will be made ... such as removing the refugee camp outside the North Gate, or at least turning it into a market of some sort.

Again thanks to Alexander Bateman, and also to Jackdays who runs the excellent Kalevala Hammer site. I also would like to extend a thank you to everyone who has contacted me about the map, and if you are expecting a reply, please get back to me again! My mailbox is stuffed with mail from work, so I might miss a mail, or forget about replying!

Especially nagging is a mail I can't find offering advice on what's beneath the sewers! Please get back to me, if you recognise that.

Now go check out the new version of the map!

Go here for the download page!

Magnus

WFRP: A great post at ACD!

Today a great post landed in my Google Reader. It's written by the very passionate fellow behind the intriguingly named Another Caffienated Day, and it concerns bridges.  To me it conjured up images of treacherous starlings under the Altdorf bridges, and the fog and rivaling smugglers having a shoot out midriver and midnight.

Read the post here!

Bonus points goes to the author for using Altdorf as an important piece of his campaign setting!

/Magnus

FAL News: One Ring to Rule them All

Today Cubicle 7 and Sophisticated Games announced that they have picked up the license for an RPG set in Middle-Earth. So we will have yet another version of this epic fantasy license, with lots of market speak in the press release.

Read the press release here!

It looks like it'll use a new system, but apart from that there's not much to be gleaned from the press release. Apart from the name, which is The One Ring: The Lord of the Rings® Role-playing Game, complete with an awkward ® screwing things up.

Still, I'm looking forward learning more about the game, and the inevitable discussions about whether a LOTR RPG will have the power to wrest customers from the almighty juggernaut that is D&D:

One Game to rule them all
One Game to find them
One Game to bring them all
and in the darkness bind them
In the land of Renton where the shadows lie.

Nah, kidding. I play D&D4e, and it's great fun. I hope The One Ring: The Lord of the Rings® Role-playing Game can be great fun as well.

/Magnus

FAL News: WFRP Game Master's Toolkit announced

Well, it was only a question of how long we'd have to wait. Just recently FFG announced the future release of the Game Master's Toolkit for Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay.

Read more about it!

A GM screen and gobs of new cards are to be expected. No new careers though as far as I read it, which is boring. There's a preview coming in a week or so.

/Magnus