WFRP: I think I just crapped my pants with joy.

Psychic Robot · Post by **Psychic Robot** » Wed Jun 17, 2009 2:40 am

I have the book. I'm reading the book. The system looks magnificent. A lot of it is reminiscent of Hackmaster (and 2e in general), with all the random rolling and chances for your character to explode. But this looks like the kind of system I'm fond of--gritty-and-humorously-dark. And while I find it irritating that the main book has lots of "Here are some examples of stuff; buy our other products to get more!" nonsense, but I'm willing to forgive that in light of the system's positive features. It also appears to have a similar level of tactical depth as D&D without the trap choices, the ridiculous levels of imbalance, and the clunky mechanics of things like grapple, bull rush, and so on.

I feel that it adds a lot less bookkeeping overall to the game while not ending up in a freeform "lol bullshit it" mess.

Oh, and there's a reason to use a shield. And weapons have varying properties, which means there's a difference between wielding a dagger and a rapier (outside of crit chance and one being a martial weapon). And with every class, it's pretty much WYSIWYG--there are no "tricks," like thinking that you should play a fighter class to fight and then learning that you can't. If you want to fight, you take a class with a high Weapon Skill, multiple attacks, and decent Wounds.

So, now that I've fellated the system, has anyone played it, and if so, what are your impressions? I haven't had the chance to go through and analyze all the mechanics--particularly not for spellcasting--but I can't wait to run a game.

cthulhu · Post by **cthulhu** » Wed Jun 17, 2009 2:58 am

Character generation is a pain because the random options range between Shit and Awesome.

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Wed Jun 17, 2009 3:39 am

Character Creation also takes too long, for a system where you could randomly explode at any moment.

Orion · Post by **Orion** » Wed Jun 17, 2009 3:46 am

I realize this post is super preliminary, but how can you possibly form ANY kind of opinion about a system without looking at its casting system?

Psychic Robot · Post by **Psychic Robot** » Wed Jun 17, 2009 3:51 am

I'm more concerned with the stabbing system than the casting system.

NineInchNall · Post by **NineInchNall** » Wed Jun 17, 2009 4:31 am

WFRP is quite possibly the single worst system that I've ever had the misfortune of playing ever ever.

I mean, A) you don't actually get to make your own character, and B) there's never any statistically significant improvement.

A) The character creation systems essentially gives you the "chance" to choose from a buttload of pregenerated characters. There is remarkably little room for customization, and what little one can do to differentiate one's character is negligible mechanically, leaving one unable to tell in-game that one character is from one "career" and another is from a different one. Oh, and on the subject of careers, talk about great fantasy choices there. You know, such inspiring blokes as Farmers, Ratcatchers, Fisherman, Blacksmiths, and Garbage Collectors.

There is something seriously wrong with a system that starts its players off in roles that are unfun and incompetent. "Oh, but you're not in your starting career for long." That you have to play a totally banal role to begin with is bad. The player should not be forced to slog through *any* parts that are not fun, as fun is the *entire point* of playing an RPG.

B) Advancement is a joke. Characters start off sucky and incompetent. After playing for several sessions (enough to take a standard D&D character to level 20) the character is *still* sucky and incompetent, has very little in the way of mechanical differentiation, and still has to contend with the fact that his best tactical option is still *running away*. You know, I think Elennsar would jizz in his pants over it.

Warhammer FRP has been described as a game where you start off thinking that you're playing D&D only to discover that you're actually playing Call of Cthulhu. This might be an apt comparison, except that Call of Cthulhu is built around the premise that combat and physical danger in general are exceedingly rare. The entire point of Call of Cthulhu is atmosphere, exploration, and solving mysteries. This is not the case in Warhammer, which is a game world predicated on, gee, war. And hammers. The game's advancement paths are almost all combat related, but the most min-maxed character that anyone could produce for Warhammer FRP is a blind, deaf, mute, comatose paraplegic who stays at home. Why? Because even at his most advanced, a character in Warhammer is statistically likely to die in single combat to a standard ork warrior. No, seriously. This is even more exacerbated when the party encounters something monstrous, which increases the chances of death to absurd levels.

To put it in D&D terms, you start off weaker than level one characters, and eventually you get to be level three. Throughout this period, you're fighting things that are CR 1 - CR 8. Does that seem even remotely fun? Bueller?

People talk about WFRP's combat and say things like this:

a douche wrote:You don't gain a bunch of hitpoints at higher levels, you gain more skills to avoid damage. If you get a sword shoved through your gut, your going to feel it, not just shrug it off because you have more than 1 hit point left. It causes you to re-think combat and act more like what a person would do instead of blindly charging into battle with no regards for your safety.

I say NO! It makes you wonder why your character doesn't just *go home*. Again, putting it in D&D terms, an advanced WFRP character is essentially a level one character with a major cloak of displacement who's fighting things that can oneshot him. Real fun, there. Let me put it this way. It's realistic for combat to be lethal, but realism does not imply fun. In fact, in an RPG, realism is often counterproductive to the entire expressed purpose of fantasy: escapism.

Given that improvement is negligible, given that character creation is essentially a random selection from pregenerated characters, and given that characters' efficacy is marginal throughout their brutally short lives, why in the name of all that's holy would they ever go off in small groups like those of adventuring parties? Why? It's utterly insane and inane.

I know there's a certain conceit that one must accept in order for an adventuring party to get together in D&D. ("He has the PC glow!") In WFRP, however, you have to shoot your suspension of disbelief in the face with a .45 before doing anything at all, because your characters have to be raving, suicidal lunatics just to leave home.

The world is a dark, there is little magic (at least for the PCs), and what magic there is is greatly feared. The setting is cool. The mechanics of the system don't back up that cool. There are systems that make such worlds actually *fun* to play, but this is not one of them.

One more thing.

Oh, yay. Random character generation. Please, let's not fall back into the dark days of AD&D, where you got stuck with playing a Fighter if you didn't roll well enough to play what you actually wanted. Again, if the point of the game is to *have fun*, then why straitjacket a player into playing anything besides the thing that he wants to play and will *have fun* with most? Sweet Jesus.

[/rant]

Doom · Post by **Doom** » Wed Jun 17, 2009 4:36 am

I won the WFRP GM thing at GenCon in like 1988...they've changed the system a bit since then (and a 4sshole at Gleemax actually claims the changes are comparable to what was done between 3rd and 4th edition DnD), but it's a good system, considering everything is in one book.

It's a very low magic world (magic has always been weird, just in different ways, in WF games), and, like many RPGs, breaks down at high level.

Combat is brutal, but 'fate points' and a competent GM can keep it from getting out of hand.

The real highlight of WFRP are the campaigns and game world, which is really cool. If you can. sink money into getting The Enemy Within campaign books (Death on the Reik, Shadows over Bogenhafen, and a few others)...it's an awesome campaign, and one I'm likely to try to convert as best I can to 4.0 soon.

It wraps up just as the players have enough experience points to be too stupid strong for the game, but loads of fun until then.

Edit: In response to the previous post about characters not improving much over time...no. A character that starts with toughness 4, gets heavy armor and shield, and chooses a few classes intelligently can become pretty much un-woundable in less than 1000 experience points. A character that starts with toughness 3 (average), isn't going to be that much further behind the curve.

sake · Post by **sake** » Wed Jun 17, 2009 5:16 am

So I take it that WFRP follows the same vein as Dark Heresy where, in setting filled with awesome stuff like Undead Cyborgs, Berzerker Plant Creatures, Ninja Pirate Space Elves, and Geneticly Engineered Catholic Nazi Supermen in Power Armor, you have to play as a canon fodder baseline human armed with a flashlight and are just as likly to be shot by your superiors as you are to get killed by a mutated follower of the evil space god of hope.

cthulhu · Post by **cthulhu** » Wed Jun 17, 2009 5:37 am

You know? pretty much.

DeadlyReed · Post by **DeadlyReed** » Wed Jun 17, 2009 5:40 am

What's keeping people from starting at the baseline they actually want to play at?

Cielingcat · Post by **Cielingcat** » Wed Jun 17, 2009 5:44 am

DeadlyReed wrote:What's keeping people from starting at the baseline they actually want to play at?

The rules say you shouldn't. This is incredibly stupid, and the game is much more fun if you can choose what you start as.

Basically, WHFRP can be very fun, but only if you don't play it as it was intended to be played.

PhoneLobster · Post by **PhoneLobster** » Wed Jun 17, 2009 10:13 am

Nine inch sums up my opinion of the system pretty well.

And as for just ignoring the rules and picking a character? Bad idea, generating your character is seriously half the game. I mean literally half the game. As in like half the game time, half the mechanics. Your character can in fact do so very little that randomly generating them is more interesting and engaging than actually playing with them. And if you spend MORE time playing than generating, well, lets just say the game is so bad any extra time there was wasted.

But really there is one thing that REALLY makes it a bad system.

The kind of people who play it.

mean_liar · Post by **mean_liar** » Wed Jun 17, 2009 2:44 pm

..and with that, I love WFRP.

Who the fuck ever rolls stats? I don't. Career choice is a choice, too - even in the book they say it doesn't need to be random.

The game is awesome and I encourage you to play and PM PhoneLobster your session reports.

mean_liar · Post by **mean_liar** » Wed Jun 17, 2009 2:49 pm

In your PMs, make sure you include exhaustive detail about the mechanics the game uses.

The combat system is great - you hack off limbs without the need for Rolemaster-level charting. WHOP! No limb. Whee!

Characters CAN actually get competent, but you're on a whole different power scale than DnD. WFRP is Low Fantasy. Casting spells invites the gods of Chaos to turn you into a shit-demon.

Spellcasting is powerful... but there is that shit-demon thing. Casting divine spells is a little better.

Armor is DR and avoiding getting hit is a separate issue. I like how it works.

Finally, the setting is great, presuming that you like shitworlds. Or Warhammer. W/E. It's fun and if you think you like it you should play it.

angelfromanotherpin · Post by **angelfromanotherpin** » Wed Jun 17, 2009 3:12 pm

mean_liar wrote:WFRP is Low Fantasy.

Fuck you, it is not.

The Empire is about the least magical of the factions, and it is still well-represented in magical equipment, fire-bolt hurling, and flying mounts. In any other game, the people who do that stuff, (i.e. the interesting stuff) are the PCs. WHFRP spits on your desire to be one of the interesting or capable. You wanted to play a High Elf Blademaster? Well you get: Fred of Nostril, assistant dung-shoveler (or his equivalent).

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Wed Jun 17, 2009 3:32 pm

Boolean wrote:I realize this post is super preliminary, but how can you possibly form ANY kind of opinion about a system without looking at its casting system?

Easily in WFRP, the player never get any spellcasting, and any character powerful enough to have any spellcasting would roast the entire player group with a hand wave. It literally doesn't matter. It would be like judging D&D without reading the Epic rules - in short a perfectly reasonable thing to do.

DeadlyReed wrote:What's keeping people from starting at the baseline they actually want to play at?

The rules for the actual stuff you want to use from the world like Slaans and vampire lords and chaos knights are not in the game. Chaos lords can and do raise their hands and transform entire villages of people into swine and there are no rules for any of this shit, because you are an assistant rat catcher and all the powerful people will kill you arbitrarily. It's a lot like Dark Heresy that way.

You play the weakling normal people scrounging through the scrap heap next to the high magic D&D campaign going on, and rules don't even exist in the system allowing you to ever participate in the main story in any meaningful way. The dragon riders and divine champions are all there, and their actions matter, but you can never aspire to being one within the context of the game. You can't even break the rules to play one because the system itself simply does not go that high before going Munchhausen.

-Username17

mean_liar · Post by **mean_liar** » Wed Jun 17, 2009 7:23 pm

angelfromanotherpin wrote:
mean_liar wrote:WFRP is Low Fantasy.
Fuck you, it is not.

The Empire is about the least magical of the factions, and it is still well-represented in magical equipment, fire-bolt hurling, and flying mounts. In any other game, the people who do that stuff, (i.e. the interesting stuff) are the PCs. WHFRP spits on your desire to be one of the interesting or capable. You wanted to play a High Elf Blademaster? Well you get: Fred of Nostril, assistant dung-shoveler (or his equivalent).

Eh. From what I can tell you're complaining mostly about the pace of XP awards. I agree they're slow and its worse in 2e. Give more.

Frank is closer to the truth of the matter - calling WHFRP Low Fantasy is disregarding its Epic-level stuff. No, you can't be Karl Franz or Nagash within the scope of the rules. You can, however, be the equivalent of a generic fantasy battle general with badass gear. +40 WS, +3 A, +4 S, +4 T, Strike Mighty Blow, Strike to Injure... not to mention the stupid unkillable dwarf problem that still exists despite their trying their hardest to get rid of it.

You're honestly not a Ratcatcher that long, and if your GM is generous enough to skip that bullshit you can actually start as a Thug/Soldier/Protagonist/Bounty Hunter/Wizard's Apprentice if you wanted.

angelfromanotherpin · Post by **angelfromanotherpin** » Wed Jun 17, 2009 7:54 pm

mean_liar wrote:calling WHFRP Low Fantasy is disregarding its Epic-level stuff.

No, it's also disregarding it's mid-level stuff. In Bretonnia there are entire units of pegasus-riding knights who glow with a holy radiance that can deflect cannonballs. Those guys don't even qualify as individual characters in the wargame.

sake · Post by **sake** » Wed Jun 17, 2009 8:23 pm

FrankTrollman wrote: You play the weakling normal people scrounging through the scrap heap next to the high magic D&D campaign going on, and rules don't even exist in the system allowing you to ever participate in the main story in any meaningful way. The dragon riders and divine champions are all there, and their actions matter, but you can never aspire to being one within the context of the game. You can't even break the rules to play one because the system itself simply does not go that high before going Munchhausen.

This reminds me of the time a friend talked us into playing an Astro City like game, using what ever was the new superhero rpg at the time, where we were normal citizens in a city filled with superheroes. It sounded like an awesome concept and a great roleplaying experience at the time, but what it effectively ended up being was us sitting around the table cheering on the DM as he jerked himself off with his DMPCs.

RandomCasualty2 · Post by **RandomCasualty2** » Wed Jun 17, 2009 9:23 pm

sake wrote: This reminds me of the time a friend talked us into playing an Astro City like game, using what ever was the new superhero rpg at the time, where we were normal citizens in a city filled with superheroes. It sounded like an awesome concept and a great roleplaying experience at the time, but what it effectively ended up being was us sitting around the table cheering on the DM as he jerked himself off with his DMPCs.

Yeah, seriously if I want that experience, I'll go play a MMORPG. I play RPGs because I want to feel like what I'm doing has an effect on the game world.

Psychic Robot · Post by **Psychic Robot** » Wed Jun 17, 2009 10:16 pm

NIN wrote:A) The character creation systems essentially gives you the "chance" to choose from a buttload of pregenerated characters. There is remarkably little room for customization, and what little one can do to differentiate one's character is negligible mechanically, leaving one unable to tell in-game that one character is from one "career" and another is from a different one. Oh, and on the subject of careers, talk about great fantasy choices there. You know, such inspiring blokes as Farmers, Ratcatchers, Fisherman, Blacksmiths, and Garbage Collectors.

There is something seriously wrong with a system that starts its players off in roles that are unfun and incompetent. "Oh, but you're not in your starting career for long." That you have to play a totally banal role to begin with is bad. The player should not be forced to slog through *any* parts that are not fun, as fun is the *entire point* of playing an RPG.

B) Advancement is a joke. Characters start off sucky and incompetent. After playing for several sessions (enough to take a standard D&D character to level 20) the character is *still* sucky and incompetent, has very little in the way of mechanical differentiation, and still has to contend with the fact that his best tactical option is still *running away*. You know, I think Elennsar would jizz in his pants over it.

I'm not sure you understand how the game is supposed to function. You seem to be approaching it from a D&D mindset: "Kill dragons 'n' shit 'cause we're heroes."

That's almost the exact opposite of what WFRP tries to accomplish. So, yeah, if you go in there, guns blazing, expecting to slaughter Chaos and be awarded the Gold Medal of Penis Extension, you're going to die. Horribly. And you damn well deserve it because a mundane human would die horribly if he were to do that.

And that's the entire point of WFRP--you're playing a mundane human in a fantasy world. It fulfills a niche completely outside of what D&D wants to do. If you want to play heroic fantasy, you shouldn't play WFRP, just like you shouldn't play D&D if you want to play animé heroes.

Your idea of "badwrongfun" is the exact attitude that caused 4e to spring forth from the foul depth's of WotC's prolapsed rectum:

"Look, you have to play a hero, and if you don't want to play a hero, then you're not having fun, and if you are having fun, then you're playing wrong because nobody else is having fun, and even if everyone else is having fun, they're playing wrong."

Again, if you want D&D, then play D&D. Don't bitch about d20 Modern because it doesn't let you cast time stop; bitch about d20 Modern because the game is bad. The same principle applies to WFRP.

Roy · Post by **Roy** » Wed Jun 17, 2009 10:32 pm

...Wait what?

Thymos · Post by **Thymos** » Wed Jun 17, 2009 10:41 pm

Psychic Robot, you missed a very important part of the criticisms.

There were two parts, 1. your going to die horribly, which you got. Your also right in part, it's not bad fun.

The part that apparently makes this not fun is the 2. Character generation takes too long if all your going to do is die horribly. Which is apparently a bad thing for die horribly games.

Personally I haven't played it but just glancing at all the classes and randomness made me stop reading.

Lich-Loved · Post by **Lich-Loved** » Wed Jun 17, 2009 10:46 pm

Psychic Robot wrote:I'm not sure you understand how the game is supposed to function. You seem to be approaching it from a D&D mindset: "Kill dragons 'n' shit 'cause we're heroes."

That's almost the exact opposite of what WFRP tries to accomplish. So, yeah, if you go in there, guns blazing, expecting to slaughter Chaos and be awarded the Gold Medal of Penis Extension, you're going to die. Horribly. And you damn well deserve it because a mundane human would die horribly if he were to do that.

+1 for spot on-ness.

It is funny in a sad sort of way to see various posters here foaming at the mouth with rage over the quirky way 3.x works (Glitterdust! Glitterdust! My wizard wins again! *nyhahahahaha* your CharOp skillz suckz!), bemoaning the brokenness of the system and then see some of the same people denigrate some other system that operates under the assumption that going from farm boy to god-king in two months is silly in the extreme. It seems the basic response to anyone posting any system that does not suffer from 3.x's stupidly broken system is that the presented system is somehow inferior to 3.x's stupidly broken system. *boggle*

I have no idea whether or not WFRP is bad or not, the real issue is: does it meet it's design goals? Is it internally consistent? Is it appealing to play? The first two questions are valid for any system, and if WFPR fails at these then it is an objectively bad system, but simply because it doesn't appeal to you because you want to become a god-king and can't under the system does not make it bad at all to play.

I fucking hate vampire games. Hate them. I don't want to be associated with wanky teen-angst vampires fighting lycans or pontificating around a mahogony table sipping blood from crystal goblets, ever. I wouldn't give a steaming pile of shit to play any version of WoD, even Franks. But that does not make it a bad game. It does not mean Frank does not know what he is doing and it sure as hell doesn't mean the system is objectively bad because I can't play a knight in armor rescuing princesses from dragons even - and this is important - even if there are knights and dragons and princesses in the vampire game anyway.

FatR · Post by **FatR** » Wed Jun 17, 2009 10:51 pm

Besides, experience can make you pretty badass in Dark Heresy, and, I assume, WFRP. You won't be a living avatar of asskicking, like high-level DnD characters are, but rules totally allow a character that can easily dismember run-of-the mill armed thugs, bandits and minor monsters (except for orks, which have [Invulnerable] subtype, due to their screwed writeup) and only be in real danger if at least a half-dozen of them catches him in the open. Which might be unimpressive by standards of DnD 3.X or Exalted, but is pretty awesome, compared to what you can usually see in fantasy literature.