Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay: First Encounter

Let's BE CLEAR

I have no previous experience with WFRP. Regrettably, I wasn't even fully aware there was a WHFRP till its latest 3rd edition iteration due to my keen interest in Fantasy Flight.

But what I have been is a huge Warhammer (fantasy/40K) fan since I was 13 which I talked about in my last post. The Warhammer universe is so rich with character, personality, humour and chaos that it truly is a great setting for an RPG. I purchased the WHFRP Core Set last month and for the past few weeks have been going through the rulebook and GM book doing my best to understand the rule system and game mechanic for my first play session.

While there are traditionalists who have complained about the new system and how Fantasy Flight has changed WFRP3 into a board game, there are also those who think the changes are for the better and further streamline the game mechanics so that you (the PC a GM) can focus more on your adventure and the storytelling.

Here's what I think so far of the components in the WFRP3 Core Set...

THE CORE SET

This is one HEAVY BOX! and my imagination ran wild with what awaited me when I popped the top open.

Here's one thing you should know about me, I'm a very visual led individual. I like shiny things. Like when I play computer games my graphic settings have to be at maximum,  and when I play board games I can't stand coloured wooden blocks that are supposed to represent castles, knights, etc.  It's one of the reasons I'm a big Fantasy Flight fanboy.

Fantasy Flight makes products of great quality and they always impress with their board game components like the ones found in Descent: Journeys in the Dark, Starcraft and Chaos in the Old World to name a few. With the WFRP3 Core Set, Fantasy Flight yet again delivers. The box is sturdy and filled to the brim with goodies.

Content of the Core Set

CARDS

Action Cards

There is a huge amount of cards in the Core Set. The cards perform a variety of functions with some card types formed into a deck that are drawn from during play, while other cards are used as an easy way to keep track of your skills, options, abilities and player information.

For a person like me (new to WFRP) I think this is a great system. Now everyone doesn't have to share or own their own rulebooks because everything they need is right in front of them during play. One of the reasons I never got into D&D was because it felt so daunting to understand game mechanics and felt too much like studying having to go through a load of D&D rule books.

D&D is too intimidating for me

SHEETS

To keep track of your character's information during play, large sturdy sheets are provided. There are Career Sheets that clearly define the different professions and careers in the game. Character Sheets allows quick access to your character's key information like characteristics, and a way of keeping track of equipment, experience and skill development.

A Party Sheet

An interesting concept in WFRP3 is the Party Sheet which represents the characters as a group with abilities, tactic and talents that can be shared. This sheet basically represents teamwork, leadership and camaraderie of the of adventurers. From my understanding, it's a way for a GM to reward teamwork and punish infighting.

PUNCHBOARD COMPONENTS

A visual aid to what is happening to each character and the monsters they face, the punchboard components helps the GM and players to easily keep track of the environmental situation and effects that are happening.

A Standup representing a troll

A nice touch, but I'm not making too much noise about it. Since I'm a big fan of the Warhammer Fantasy Table Top game and know a lot of people who play it, my long term goal is to build up a collection of miniatures I can use to replace the punchboard creatures during play sessions. At the moment I'm looking at getting/scavenging second-hand bits from here and there.

CUSTOM DICE

Now what's really "thinking out of the box" when it comes to RPG systems is what Fantasy Flight have done with the custom dice in WFRP3. This isn't the first time Fantasy Flight have gone against convention with dice. Descent: Journey in the Dark was the first. The basic idea is that numbers aren't always going to be able to provide role players (or at least not easily) with a method of resolving creative and changing tactics, situations, and effects. 

  

       in with the new

Instead of calculating numbered values of action and the numbers it has to "check" against to succeed WFRP3's system takes your character's attributes and based on how easy or difficult the action you want to take is you add challenge dice for the difficulty and misfortune dice for environmental effects. 

Success dice are cancelled out by challenge dice. As long as you have more success dice then challenge dice your action succeeds. As simple as that. 

THAT'S BASICALLY THE CORE SET

I haven't gone into the full detail of each game component since this post is more of an introduction of what you'll get when you purchase the WFRP3 Core Set. I will try to elaborate the game system in further detail in a future post. I'm GM'ing my first session this Saturday. Hope I don't screw it up. Till then it's reading and more reading...

NEXT ON BANES & BOONS: If my GM'ing session happens this Saturday, then my next post will be about the experience, my thoughts of the game in action and what I learned. 

The Box that Started it all

A RIGHT OF PASSAGE

I remember the first time I was introduced to the universe created by Games Workshop. I had just turned 13 and my mom had given me the privilege of picking out my own birthday gift. Looking back I think it was more my mom's way of bypassing the guesswork involved in choosing a gift a teenage boy would find cool. after an hour looking around, I had still not found anything that tickled my fancy and my mom was starting to lose patience. Then out of the corner of my eye, I saw it...

A BOX TO RULE THEM ALL

I remember thinking "WOW! that's one big box." Never had I seen such wonder. More wonderful was the image of utter awesomeness that was on the box cover. An image of total glorified carnage and violence that gripped my 13-year-old innocence by the throat demanding submission to its will.

The box art, for that, was what it was; pure artistry, was of men, NAY! Warriors in oversized armour fighting their way against all odds through tight corridors blasting their way against swarms of alien horrors. A spark in the darkest recesses of my mind ignited. I felt hunger.  It was beautiful. It was called "Space Crusade". , and I had to have it.

Space Crusade (1990)

THE BEGINNING OF A JOURNEY

Flipping the board game around to its back further fed the hunger that was growing within. Space marines! Orcs and goblins with laser guns! A mechanical dreadnought of death, and chaos marines?! chaos marines! two words in the English dictionary that could only have been envisioned and made a reality by a mind tainted by the Warp.

15 minutes (of demanding, that turned to an attempt at justifying the price, that resorted to pleading then degrading to begging) later I walked out the store with the biggest grin of my childhood never to be surpassed (slight over-exaggeration) till the day of my marriage to the love of my life.

A UNIVERSE EXPANDING

What has always been great about Games Workshop is the amount of back story and history they include with their products. "Space Crusade" was my introduction to Warhammer 40K. A very grim look at humanity or lack of it in a universe at war. A masterful re-imagining of space opera where even the best of intentions is not without its morbid un-glorified carnage. A universe where even humanity's beacon of strength and hope is a carcass on a golden throne kept alive by the sacrifice of thousands of psykers (humans with psychic abilities) a day.

Warhammer 40K is where humanity's traditional enemies and allies of fantasy have been given a brilliant makeover whether it's the Greenkins with their crude salvage and tinkering of technology or the advance but dying race of Eldars (elves), Warhammer 40K has character and personality in the bucket loads.

My constant hunger for content regarding Warhammer 40k in general and Space Marines specifically lead me on an inevitable path towards one of the greatest indulgences of my life; Warhammer 40K tabletop gaming. It was like chess on steroids. And it had lots and lots of little miniatures that I could collect to my heart's content.  And with the introduction of Warhammer 40K tabletop, Warhammer Fantasy got on my radar.

FOCUSING MY PASSION

Through my years with Games Workshop, the funny thing is that building an army, assembling the miniatures, customizing components, and finally painting them was always the best fun for me. Actually playing the game was secondary. I just enjoyed researching the army history, back story and creating the fluff behind my army.

It was always the story first and foremost that was my passion. The conflicts. The tragedies, The betrayals. The magazine "White Dwarf" was my companion and the most obscure Space Marine chapters, and the history of the Horus Heresy my obsession.

15 years, a wife and two kids later my fascination with the Warhammer Universe still burns bright and while priorities have changed (diapers and milk being the priority) and Games Workshop's pricing to costly for me to upkeep my tabletop hobby, I still have a hard-on I mean warm spot for the Warhammer lore.

A SLIGHT CHANGE IN FLIGHT PATH

About 3 years ago I started thinking about how cool it would be to have my kids involved in my gaming hobby. Remembering how my dad introduced me to chess and the great memories I still have of our games together till this day I started researching board games (it also was a justification to my wife on why a grown man could still play board games with little plastic men). I grew up with the classics like Monopoly, Snakes-n-Ladders, checkers and later on the revolution that was to be "Space Crusade" so I was keen to find out what was the "in thing" with kids nowadays.

Descent: Journey in the Dark (2005)

I've always been a very visually led person so the games coming out of Days of Wonder and Fantasy Flight automatically caught my interest. Starting from Descent my collection of board games has grown to about 15 titles. The majority being games from Fantasy Flight due to their partnership with Games Workshop and the Warhammer IP.

WARHAMMER FANTASY ROLEPLAY (WHFRP)

Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 3rd Edition

I don't think I can talk about WFRP without mentioning Dungeon & Dragons (D&D). Growing up in the middle east (Kuwait in the 80s) and later in Asia (Malaysia in the 90s) D&D was never really a viable option. Stores didn't sell them, Online shopping wasn't practical yet, and there wouldn't have been anyone to play with anyway. Even the "Space Crusade" game a got so many years ago was during a family trip back t Ireland.

Today, the scene in Malaysia's gaming community is so much more respectable and diverse now with more and more independent stores stocking up on products from the likes of Games Workshop, Privateer Press, Wizards of the Coast, Fantasy Flight, and Days of Wonder. The player community is also growing rapidly mostly fueled by the guys who learned and played Warhammer and D&D during their university years abroad in the USA, England, and Australia.

With Warhammer's great story and history and curiosity with the RPG elements of D&D, I always fantasized about running a Warhammer RPG, exploring wastelands, dwarven strongholds and fighting off the corrupting influences of Chaos.

I was not fully aware of WFRP till the 3rd Edition.

D&D has always seemed daunting to start due to the dice, the math involved and loads of books to read. So when I read about WFRP 3rd Edition's new system I was intrigued but surrendered to the fact that it would most likely pass me by because if Warhammer Table Top was already scarce, WFRP would be almost non-existent in Malaysia. By accident, I walked into a small comic store while waiting for my wife to get her hair done one day and lo and behold out of the corner of my eye I saw it...

I remember thinking "WOW! that's one big box." It was Deja Vu. A spark in the darkest recesses of my mind ignited yet again. I felt a hunger.  It was beautiful, and I had to have it.

THIS BLOG

This blog will be my attempt at transcribing my experience learning about the system that is WFRP 3rd Edition. There are many rules yet to decrypt, and as I will be playing the role of Game Master (GM) this blog will also act as a record of my sessions and what will surely be learned from them.

If through this process you find the content I post helpful to you in whatever way you see fit the better for all of us :)

The dice have been rolled!.

What Banes and Boons await me?...

NEXT ON BANES & BOONS: My next topic will be my thoughts on WFRP 3rd Edition specifically the new Core Set and its components that have gotten as much negative feedback as good regarding its revolutionary game mechanic.