Warhammer Old World, a.k.a. WFB returns.

[Hyarion]

I'm excited about this announcement because to me it indicates that they are actually moving forward with The Old World Project. But I was less than inspired by the sneak preview.

[Jadrax]

"Remember Warhammer Fantasy Battle? Remember how much you loved all those historically inspired units like Horse Archers and Winged Lancers?"

"Well here are some emo chicks with ice weapons from Elder Scrolls, now fuck off."

[Capitaneus Fractus]

"One of the coolest aspects of returning to the world-that-was is the opportunity to revisit certain aspects of its classic lore and delve into them in greater detail than ever before."

Coming from the immature gang of GW's employees who perpetrates their abuses on a tabletop game now designed to please to prepubert teenagers in such an excess that I already find their logorrhoea overly ridiculous when I was myself teenager, I have to admit that I've read "coolest" as "terrible" and "greater" as "stupider"... And I wasn't disapointed by what followed.

That is such a shame when you see how intelligent was the 80s-90s production of the Fantasy Roleplay (and how much it is ill-advised to seek to re-conciliate the Roleplaying Game with the shit published by Games Workshop since decades...). The statement of intent of the first edition of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay is particularly enlightening: most of their intend was at best relativised and at worst annihilated by the willingness to conciliate the Role playing Game with the Battle Game...

[Knight of the Lady]

Good that some stuff is coming and that Kislev gets some love.

[Braddoc]

"One of the coolest aspects of returning to the world-that-was is the opportunity to revisit certain aspects of its classic lore and delve into them in greater detail than ever before."

Coming from the immature gang of GW's employees who perpetrates their abuses on a tabletop game now designed to please to prepubert teenagers in such an excess that I already find their logorrhoea overly ridiculous when I was myself teenager, I have to admit that I've read "coolest" as "terrible" and "greater" as "stupider"... And I wasn't disapointed by what followed.

That is such a shame when you see how intelligent was the 80s-90s production of the Fantasy Roleplay (and how much it is ill-advised to seek to re-conciliate the Roleplaying Game with the shit published by Games Workshop since decades...). The statement of intent of the first edition of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay is particularly enlightening: most of their intend was at best relativised and at worst annihilated by the willingness to conciliate the Role playing Game with the Battle Game...

I really like 2nd Ed WFRP, I prefer it over 4th and even 1st. I mean it's like playing Call of Cthulhu in the 90s era; sure there's tanks and artillery and figher jets, but there's none of that at every street corner in Arkham, just like there's no grandisose magic, war machines and guy on a Griffon at every corner in Nuln.

But yeah, not too keen on having a whole Ice themed female warrior caste; where are the Kossars? Worse case amke them apprentice ice witches or something...becasue now it appears magic is something rather numdane and easily used rather than being uncommon and dangerous.

Maybe they are headed toward the same generic road that 40k is taking, with Marines now being Generic Space Super Soldiers with a different coat of paint on thier armour..

[Capitaneus Fractus]

The strength of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, in my humble opinion, never were rules, but rather its universe and its scenarii: a caustic and mature low fantasy Role-playing game set in a Renaissance-like era Germanic coherent, credible and complex world, where most of inhabitants where unaware of the threat crouch beneath their feet and where the main threat on the Empire wasn't monsters, orcs, dragons, but men's weak morality and ethic: Homo homini ergo illi eiuspse lupus... And strange urban investigation adventures rather than the, then quite common, heroic dungeons crawls. A Cthulhu in the Renaissance, with more violence, more irony and more social contestation. The idea to tied Death on the Reik with fluvial trade show how designers wanted to make this universe look real, and how some down to earth aspects might be very good occasion for roleplay!
It seem that this recipe for a good fantasy role playing game wasn't exactly the recipe for a good selling fantasy battle miniature game, especially when the target of those miniature became teenagers. The two game universe diverged and I feel that 1. most of the Fantasy Battle stuff isn't much useful for the Fantasy Role playing game. 2. that most attempts to conciliate the divergent universes tended to weaken the strengths of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 3. that while rules were certainly better in the 2nd edition than in the 1st, most of the publications of the 2nd edition were bland context supplements (something that is somewhat easy to do, especially when it is done with a lot of padding, like I feel it was for the 2nd ed.) rather than good scenarii combined with useful related context (something that is more difficult to do).

We can read again the notice of intent of the original role playing game...



and wonder what has change since, for better or for worse...