As promised (threatened?) my online group recently tried out the Warhammer Fantasy Roleplaying Game, fourth edition (WFRP4e). This piece is strictly my view of how things went as a player and my opinion on the ease of learning the system. For detailed information on the mechanics, including changes from previous editions, take a look at Dave Brown’s multipart WFRP4e review.
Spoiler Alert! The adventure we played is based on the free WFRPG module, “If Looks Could Kill,” and this play experience includes spoilers!
My biggest takeaway is that WFRPG isn’t nearly as dark as I had expected it to be, something my fellow-player Empty Bacta Tank agreed on. Now, how dark and gritty any RPG turns out to be is partly dependent on the DM/GM, and our WFRPG GM (Jon Stevens) has never been into the “I love TPKs!” school of gamemastering. But after this one-shot, I am inclined to think that WFRPG is less grim-dark and more starting as low as possible on the social scale, borne out by classes like Apothecary and Ratcatcher, with the traditional Small But Vicious Dog, plus minimalist gear and weaponry.
Those two classes were taken by me and EBT, respectively. The other pregens played were a noble Guard, a Bounty Hunter, and a Wizard (a class that gets more suspicion than respect in this setting). As he almost always does in his one-shots, Jon provided the pre-gens, most of them based on types of characters he knows most of us enjoy. This both piques our interest in a try-out and means everyone doesn’t need rulebooks until/unless we are sure the system is a keeper. (Full character sheets are on Jon’s own blog.)
Since I’ve already referred you to Dave Brown’s series, I’m not going to get into the mechanics, except that we all picked them up easily. I don’t think I picked up WFRPG mechanics quite as quickly as I did Savage Worlds’, but WFRPG wasn’t confusing or overly-complex either. EBT and I particularly liked that Hit Locations don’t require a separate roll; just switch digits on your (percentile) attack roll. If your attack result was 34, then it hits location 43. I am always in favor of speeding up combat, so players can accomplish more, and have more fun, in a single session.
Our adventure started out, like so many, as being hired by someone–and the trip was eventful too. The ship ran into trouble on the river, and people ended up overboard, including an elder Traveller (Romany-inspired culture), whom my fellow PCs made a priority of rescuing. My major contribution to this encounter was warning everyone not to splash and attract the attention of the ginormous predatory fish known to inhabit river shallows like this. It might have been more helpful, if my Initiative roll had been higher–so Rosalinde could yell before one of them showed up. Otherwise, the Apothecary’s ability to identify and provide some info about creatures we were up against, was a useful niche for her. (I don’t want to play a support character in every game/campaign but was quite happy to do so for this one, especially since the PC was made at my request.)
When we finally got to our destination, our BH noticed some shady people–and then our patron got killed. Of course there was a connection, and we got hired to find the killer, who seemed to have taken our patron’s key to his moneybox. Extra motivation–no one’s getting paid unless we find that key.
Yes, we found them…in a swamp…along with an undead animal monster…which kept us busy. Eventually, we killed it, our BH and Ratcatcher tracked down our original quarries, who got dragged back to the Traveller camp. When last we left our PCs, they were going to go back to town with the headwoman and the prisoners, for more money. As EBT said, “All in all…pretty profitable, and no body got killed. Well, we didn’t get killed.” Maybe that’s as good as it gets in WFRPG? It was certainly good enough for us, in-character and out-of-character.
We had a lot of fun, with 3 major encounters in 5-6 hours of play. I doubt our group will ever play a WFRPG campaign, partly because we aren’t looking for another campaign since we have several in various stages. I do think it’s safe to say we’ll play a few one-shots here and there.
Credit: Thanks to Empty Bacta Tank for sharing his take on this WFRPG game session.
Linda Whitson
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