Warhammer Fantasy Role Playing Game

Hammer this into your head and fight chaos.

Overall score:

Warhammer FRPG is, obviously, based on the rules for the Warhammer miniatures war gaming system. I can't review it as an adaptation of that game, for I don't do table top miniatures (I fear the addiction). However, I'll be happy to spill my guts about the RPG merits of this out of print game.

One thing you should know right up front about WFRPG is that it has a lot of options. Too many options. There are dozens of character classes--so many that even the writers recognize that most people would be incapable of learning the nuances from reading the book, and that only extensive playing will give familiarity with these choices. To this end, they've created a random class determination system for beginning characters. This overcomes the mechanics issue of not knowing, but it forces a player into a role he may not enjoy or be prepared to play. It's nice to have options, but if you want to be that diverse maybe it's better to pull from a selection of powers and abilities rather than use a class system. On the plus side (at least in terms of familiarity), the overall framework of WFRPG is nearly identical to D&D, encompassing the same selection of races, class types, and basic atmosphere.

On the other hand, magic is a bit weak. There is only a small selection of spells, and religious magic is especially difficult to advance in. This is neither good nor bad except regarding the type of game you like to play. If you prefer magic to be a mysterious source of power beyond the PC's ken, well, difficult and fairly limited magic is a good thing. If you're interested more in a D&D style dungeon crawl, don't bring a WFRPG wizard.

As for the mechanics, the system works surprisingly well. You have around 10 statistics and a plethora of available skills. Combat and everything else is simply a matter of skill rolls to hit, to avoid damage, etc. The number of hits a character can take is fairly limited, which results in fairly deadly combat. Though there are still too many choices, the mechanics themselves are very easy to grasp and maintain a reasonable diversity of application for the stats.

Advancement is also interesting. Instead of a strict progression through a series of abilities for each class, you have a list of abilities that each class can eventually confer. Each time you gain an advancement, you may choose one of the abilities on the list and progress toward the maximum listed. You don't have to "finish" a class in most cases, and can instead gain advancements from other classes. Again, there's a great blessing of diversity for progression that helps ensure there are not simply archetypes.

The setting, on the other hand, is incredibly poor. There's some great background material about the origins of the world and its doom to fall to the forces of chaos ("chaos" is apparently more evil than "evil"), but the actual current setting is hardly creative at all. There are dwarves, and they hate the elves. The elves are high minded, beautiful forest dwellers. There's some small races that don't really fit into the world setting. And then the humans who spread everywhere and don't care who their allies are. The world map looks very familiar, but maybe that's only because the main setting is essentially Europe with cultures that roughly match cultures from a corresponding area in the real Europe.

In other words, you don't play WFRPG for the default setting. They haven't put much thought into it and essentially stole everything from the ideas of Tolkien via Gygax. There are, however, a few fairly original creatures formed by the idea of the forces of chaos "infecting" the world.

So there's a brief run down. The book is out of print, but you can still readily find it on Amazon's used bookstore areas. If you can get it for a good enough price, this is a decent addition to your library. There are some great ideas for fantasy system mechanics, just don't expect very much from the setting--and expect to spend a lot of time learning all the options.

Written by SaintEhlers on August 25th, 2003