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Tiki Snakes
2010-11-19, 02:24 PM
I'm currently winding up a far-reaching, epic fantasy campaign involving the plane's and several major planar powers and factions. It's been a 4e DnD campaign throughout.

I've also got some ideas relating to a sprawling, partially ruined city in part of my own Material Plane. It would focus on the Guardsmen / Cops trying to keep a semblance of order in the sprawling, wicked city.

But I'm not sure if the DnD concept of extra-ordinary people really sits with the type of feel I'd want to foster in the players. Homebrew is one option, of course, but the alternative is to switch systems for this particular campaign.

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/1844162206.01._SCLZZZZZZZ_.jpg

SO, for modeling relatively normal people, in an urban enviroment of a not entirely unusual fantasy world, how would the Warhammer roleplay system stack up?
What differences should I look out for? How homebrew friendly is it? And in an ideal world, which edition should I try to get my hands on? The first, Second, or the slightly contentious new one with the cards and special dice and so forth?

Also, what are people's general opinion on WHFRP, any particularly awesome tales, any lulzy problems with the game you've encountered? I'd say general WHFRP related discussion should for my purposes, be considered On Topic.

BloodyAngel
2010-11-19, 03:00 PM
Warhammer fantasy RP is a great game, and I've had a lot of fun with it. Though it helps that I'm a huge fan of the warhammer setting and lore.

Rules-wise... it's a pretty harsh and dangerous setting. Characters will not be carving their way through a half-dozen goblins or orcs before breakfast each day. The average starting character has ROUGHLY a 30-35% chance to succeed at a given action, and about 11 or so "wounds". Two unarmored men of average strength fighting with one-handed swords will miss often, but do about 1d10 damage per successful hit. Combat can end in as little as one hit, and the damage from it is brutal and nasty... more so given that there isn't very accessible magic healing in the setting.

In a pbp warhammer I'm in, one of our players lost a hand, and my character is sporting some nasty burn scars on her legs as a result of a not entirely successful attempt at a witch burning. In any case... it can be a great game if you like a more gritty game. I'd advise you to look into it and see what you think. It's got great lore behind it too... but if you're really into homebrew, I suppose it could work for that as well. Not nearly as easy as a well known system like D&D, but basically it's all based around percentiles and d10 for everything. Simple stuff.

Tiki Snakes
2010-11-20, 10:24 PM
I think that gritty sums it up reasonably well. Previous characters in past campaigns have come from the location and done daring deads and generally been awesome fantasy heroes.

I think If they rolled up characters with fancy powers all these 'special attacks' to use, they'd get the wrong idea of the intended place in the world of the type of people the campaign was about. Not the kind of people who should expect to start with three magic items and earn a good bundle of treasure, but the type of people who should start with two pairs of boots if they're doing well, and who should be happy to see out the campaign with the necessary ready money to buy slightly better quality groceries than at the start, and still count to ten on their fingers.

From the sound of it, I may see what editions the FLGS has in stock.

Homebrew is important for this campaign idea because the setting was originally a DnD one, so I'll need to be recreating races/creatures. Much fun as it would be to one-day run an actual warhammer setting game, it's not what I'd be first and foremost buying the book for.
(I'd much rather play in such a game than run one, I suspect.)