WFRP: Mannfred Hilfer

WFRP: FFG to the resuce?

Breaking news! Things are confusing and exciting now. Fantasy Flight Games, one of my favourite game publishers and the publisher of the master piece Midnight campaign setting, have reached an agreement with Games Workshop to create games based on GW IP.

Read more here!

And even more here!

Interesting. I still don't have high hopes for WFRP, but at least there's some measure of hope at the moment!

/Magnus

WFRP: Black Industries put down

In an incredibly disappointing move, Black Library today announced that Black Industries, the publisher of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, Warhammer 40,000 Roleplay and Talisman will cease publication of games. In a spectauclar display of corporate lingo, Black Library claims they will take this opportunity to focus on the core business of publishing novels.

Well, it was a good run while it lasted, and WFRP have emerged from this stronger than ever. It's going to be interesting to see how WFRP fans deal with this. If the past is anything to go by, there will be much gnashing of teeth and boasting of prophetic prowess as people fire up their "I told you so"-engines.

The fact remains; BI put out a great game and some great supplements, and their efforts will be sorely missed.

EDIT: here's the link to the announcement:

The terrible news!

/Magnus

WFRP: iAltdorf updated to version 1.10

As a celebration of my first year of writing The Altdorf Correspondent, I hereby release version 1.10 of the iAltdorf map. This time, I have done some major restructuring which most of you won't notice, but also added a completely new sewer layer! So check out the new version of the map!

Go here for the download page!

Magnus

FAL Review: The Giant's Skull

Publisher Fiery Dragon. Released 2001. Format Softcover. Game system d20. Pages 40. Price $9.95.



Designer James Bell.

In this installment of Fanboy At Large, I cast my net back through the years, searching for the hidden gems of the vibrant and exciting beginnings of what will go down in history as the d20 era. After trawling a bit I hauled in my catch of the day; The Giant's Skull, an adventure that clocks in at 40 pages, published in 2001 by Fiery Dragon. The flaming draconian was one of the first pioneers of the d20 market and brought to market several interesting and innovative adventures, but today they are mostly known for their counter collections. Although they do offer adventures as well through their web site, now that I took the time to check it out.



The Giant's Skull is a remarkable adventure for one single reason: you get to play both sides of the story. Apart from that, not much stands out. Between the covers you find 40 pages of adventure material, split into two sections concerning The Giant's Skull, a fairly powerful magic item. The text is reasonably well organised, but suffers from a confusing and somewhat back to front approach to explaining the plot. Apart from a very good cover, the art and maps are clear but nothing evocative. They do their thing, nothing more and nothing less.



The first thing that marks this adventure as something other than a run of the mill offering is that colour counters are included. The counters show pictures of the monsters and heroes of the adventure, and they can be cut out and used instead of regular minis for resolving combat. A great idea, and something Fiery Dragon later developed into a product line of its own.



The duality of the plot is of course the star of the show. The first time the players play the part of a gang of ogres bent on reclaiming The Giant's Skull from the evil and nasty humans. The second round casts the players as their regular PCs tasked with retrieving the artifact from the evil and nasty ogres. Unfortunately the adventure in itself falls short of its true potential, and is basically an average dungeon romp. I feel that it is a wasted opportunity, but a GM who works with the format can spin the ogre versus humans conflict into something truly memorable.



Worth checking out, but expect to work with the story to bring out the adventure's full potential!



Magnus

WFRP: Fumbling the scenario competition

Well, to make it official: I couldn't get my manuscript done in time to enter the BI scenario competition. The scenario is still mostly bare bones and after the playtest on tuesday last week, I realised that some stuff had to be added and other stuff changed, but alas ... I couldn't find the time. Well, such is life, I guess.

But to all who did manage to get their entries in ... I'm impressed!

And good luck to all of you. My scenario might show up some other time, when I've assembled the pieces. One such piece is Uriah Hepp, which was posted yesterday, and most likely more pieces will show up in due time. In the meantime, look forward to an update to the iAltdorf project in a few weeks.

Magnus

WFRP: Uriah Hepp