Four characteristics confirmed

Looking through the latest news from Cubicle 7 we find that we have four charateristics confirmed:

• Weapon skill 
• Strength 
• Toughness
• Initiative

The only one I didn't really expect to make a come back was Initiative. I felt that in WFRPv1 everything centered around having a high Initiative. It simply became a characteristic that was a catch-all for too many Tests.

Given that Initiative is back, my guess is that it will be paired with an Initiative Bonus. Much like SB and TB we will have IB, and initiative order in combat will be determined by a roll of 1d10 + IB.

A guess as good as any in these times of foggy news from Cubicle 7.

Combat preview

Today Cubicle 7 dropped another "preview" of WFRPv4. This time the post talked about combat.

The roots to the new system is the combat system of WFRPv1 and WFRPv2. The stated goal has been to speed up combat by eliminating situations where nothing really happens in a combat round because of the low chances to hit.

There are a few nice morsels of information in the post.

Three characteristics are mentioned: Strength, Toughness and Initiative. Yes, that famous "Big I" makes a comeback! Hopefully it will be used more sparingly than in WFRPv1, where it ended up being used for just about anything that wasn't combat and became the most important of the characteristics. Strength and Toughness were in WFRPv2, but given the reintroduction of Initiative we might be looking at more influences from WFRPv1 than I expected.

As for combat the big new thing is Advantage. This can be earned during a battle and used to gain a +10% bonus on an attack test. Several points of advantage can be accumulated during a fight, and they dissipate when certain conditions are met. It seems be a more detailed take on "winning" in combat from WFRPv1. It'll be interesting to see how much "keeping track of fiddly bits" there is for the game master, but as the design goal has been to speed things up, I hope that's been taken care of.

Cubicle 7 works in mysterious ways - no WFRP launch at UK Games Expo

So you might remember the guys from UK Expo claiming to speak for C7 and announcing that WFRPv4 would launch at UK Games Expo?

 ---FROM THE VIDEO---

 "One of the things we can say, I know that Cubicle 7 are working on Warhammer 4 rpg and they've given us the rights to say today that that will be launched at the UK Games Expo."

 --------

The video is here, check at 19 minutes.

This has now been walked back according to grimandperilous.com.

I haven't found the clarification from Cubicle 7 that is mentioned in the linked post, but I guess that Jon Hodgson has now somewhere officially given information that identifies the UK Games Expo statement as being incorrect.

Now the game has been identified as the pdf being "anticipated" in June and the print version "anticipated" in July. I can't wrap my head around the "anticipated" thing ... sounds a lot weaker than "will be released" and more like "we put our hopes in that this thing will be released in pdf in June, but are choosing "anticipated" so as not to really promise anything".

The radio silence on this is baffling and confusing. I think that a somewhat more communicative stance from Cubicle 7 would generate a lot of positive chatter that would carry over to positive fan activity once the game is released. As it now stands when the last "preview" dropped, they said "more info coming soon" and we are now looking at over a week since then.

Yeah well, the game will be here some day. Stay tuned for more info from me about the game then.

Careers of the fourth edition

There have been some hints as to the careers of WFRP fourth edition. When the pre-order was announced, it was accompanied by three images of different careers. Also on the covers released as the first teaser are four adventurers with iconic looks. That gives us sixteen careers so far.

From those images and that number I presume that the career structure of this edition will be much like first and second edition.

I haven't seen the careers in the images identified anywhere, so my best guesses are found below using the careers from second edition as reference.

Bounty Hunter - Apprentice Wizard - Pistolier - Bailiff

Rat Catcher - Camp Follower - Explorer - Outlaw

Navigator - Envoy - Knight - Charlatan

Witch-hunter - Trollslayer - Noble - Zealot

WFRP fourth edition page count

Took to thinking about what little we know. One thing Cubicle 7 has told us is that the rulebook is 320 pages long.

At the moment I believe that the 320 page total of the core book is a result of taking WFRP second edition rulebook (259 pages) and adding The Old World Bestiary (131 pages). That makes 390 pages, but shave off the fluff section and we're down to 54 pages of beasts, and then we land at 309 pages.

We can remove 9 pages of beasts from the core rulebook, and that would give about 20 pages extra for fluff if C7 wanted to add some of that to the rulebook. So give or take some info here and there and we are in the vicinity of 320 pages.

We could also be looking at a combination of the second edition rulebook (259 pages), The Old World Bestiary (131 pages) and Sigmar's Heirs (131 pages). Cut out the beasts (9 pages) and the info on the empire  (14 pages) from the rulebook, add in the GM section of OWB and then add a slightly edited SH, you could land close to 320 pages.

The first one (core + OWB) seems the simplest. The second one (core + OWB + SH) is what I would have done.

Cubicle 7 starts the system previews

The other day Cubicle 7 started with their system previews. In keeping with the rollout so far, not much in the way of mechanics was gleaned from the information offered. Basically, there will be three ways of handling tests and the consequences of success or failure. And that's about it for the preview.

It seems to hew very closely to the second edition rules, as what is described in the preview can basically be found on page 88 and 89 of the WFRP second edition rulebook. Judging from that I am at the moment expecting the fourth edition to have basically the same rules as second edition, with some minor modifications.

This should sit well with the fans of first and second edition, although I have seen some posters express wishes for more experimentation and new takes. But we got that in spades with the third edition and that backfired with many old hands, so I firmly believe that Cubicle 7 will not take any such chances with this edition.

The next preview will be about combat. I hope we will get to know how the pc profiles look, and what statistics are used in the game.

Read the preview here!