Winds of Chaos

The WFRP 4th edition preview has been out for a while now, and I have some thoughts!

First impressions: very good presentation, gorgeous artwork, intriguing new ideas, and an obvious knowledge of and devotion to WFRP history and what has gone before.

THINGS I LIKE
— The Old World. Having skipped 3e, it’s been a long time since I’ve ventured into the Old World and I’m really glad to have it back.
— Advantage in combat. On first glance this seems like a nice nod to “advantage” in 1e, where the winner of the previous round got a +10% WS bonus during the next round. It seems like it will speed combat up a bit in the later stages, as Success Levels keep adding up.
— Success Levels. My biggest complaint about 2e, the “whiffiness” of combat, should be gone. And making such direct use of SL’s opens up interesting possibilities, like rolling multiple dice over multiple rounds to build up enough SL’s to, say, pick a lock. Ingenious.
— No cards, tokens, special dice, or other board-game-derived fiddly bits. Having purchased the 3e rules and a few supplements on eBay over the past year, I finally see what they were trying to do here. And having heard some really positive things about the system and its supplements I think they succeeded. Those extra parts just always struck me as alien to WFRP, and I wasn’t ever able to get over that to actually give the system a fair shake.

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*casts site necromancy spell*

Apparently Cubicle 7 has picked up the WFRP license and is already hard at work on a 4th edition of everyone’s favorite RPG. I am so far out of the loop nowadays I only recently became aware of it. As far as previous editions go, my favorite is v1 for the setting and v2 for the ruleset. I have no opinion on v3 since I never purchased anything for it — although I have to say I have heard some very good things from people who have actually sat down and played it.

As it is, I am cautiously optimistic about v4. Cubicle 7 is certainly saying all the right things, and the new cover is a clever throwback to the v1 hardback that caught my eye around 1987. Maybe it’s time to dust off those dice and get back into a regular gaming group while we wait for the official release.

Good lord. Has it really been 7 years since the site was last updated?

Over the past two years this site has never been very far from my mind, but unfortunately I have had next to no time to devote to it. I keep hoping I’ll scare up some moments to finish the first chapter of my 2nd Ed campaign “Stones & Sigils,” but so far it hasn’t worked out and this site has remained silent.

Fortunately, Seann McAnally has come through with a very useful tool: a convenient online critical hit generator, complete with critical effects compiled from this site. Try it out, kick the tires a bit, and let us know what you think. Thanks, Seann!

So I’ve been looking around for ways to expand the site’s offerings without compromising the quality of the site. The perfect solution hit when Seann McAnally emailed me about Masquerade of Horrors, his award-winning entry for the 2005 BI Scenario Contest. He sent me a revised and updated version, which is up right now on the Scenario page, ready to be downloaded and enjoyed.

He’s hinted at sending me more scenarios in the near future, which given the quality of Masquerade of Horrors, I’d be honored to host as well. You might help encourage this process by leaving him some feedback on Masquerade in the comments.

Wolph42 has sent me updates on some of his useful tools, including Ex Libris, 3 versions of his Inn Generator (2 for PC and 1 for Mac), and a new version of the Trade Tool. These tools are pretty polished, so further updates should be few and far between. Apparently, the new Ex Libris generates a “GUI Library” for players, and the Inn Generator contains a room builder with groups of people and descriptions.

So check out the updated versions in the Downloads Section!

Remember when Black Industries had a yearly WFRP scenario contest? Well, Strike to Stun is hosting one for 2009 and I’m a judge! Head on over to the StS Contest Page for more information.

Here’s hoping we get a ton of entries!

I spent the last week elbow-deep in code, adding the material from Dave Graffam’s Encroachment of Chaos site. You can find it all under the new, aptly-named “Encroachment” tab, along the site’s link bar above. Or you can just go here and start downloading all of Dave’s WFRP v2 goodness.

I think the addition of Dave’s material makes Winds of Chaos one of the best one-stop resource sites for WFRP v2 on the net. Based on that, and the feedback I’ve received from all of you, I’ve decided to keep the site online for the foreseeable future. In addition, I’m thinking about doing something special for the WFRP v2 community. So keep your eye out here in the next week or two for another exciting announcement.

I really don’t know what to make of the new system from FFG. I doubt I’ll buy it, and that makes playing or GMing it nearly impossible. So, what happens to this site, which has been dormant for over a year?

I don’t know. I’ll probably keep it online, although I’ll have to transfer it back to my previous hosting service in a few months. I may dust off my old Stones & Sigils campaign and begin work on it again, now that there won’t be any more official supplements for WFRP v2.

Maybe I’m just getting too old, and the hobby I loved along with my favorite game within it is passing me by. Maybe younger fans will take up the torch. I’m just not sure I care all that much any more. A few years ago I was keenly interested in the v1 vs v2 debate. Now, even the thought of debating the relative strengths and weaknesses of any of the WFRP incarnations is enough to make me nauseated. I mean, I suppose I understand FFG’s need for peripherals like cards and proprietary dice in this age of digital piracy, but I don’t understand why FFG’s customers would need them.

I wish FFG success. Who knows? Maybe custom dice, interlocking cards with “sockets,” and party tension meters are the wave of the future, and not merely the last gasp of print media desperately trying to avoid being replaced by digital.

Good news everyone! Two more tools from Wolph42 today. This time the excel spreadsheets are based on two of Henrik Gronberg’s Liber Fanatica articles from the GM Toolshed.

The first is a book generator, complete with, among other things, quality of writing, age, condition, notable features, and peculiarities of penmanship. It’s perfect for the GM constantly put on the spot by players searching through libraries or (gasp!) private homes.

The second is something we’ve seen before in another form: Henrik’s Inn Generator. This tool is extremely handy for those of us who don’t have internet access while GMing and so are limited to offline tools. It will generate the name, type of establishment, size, costs, what the inn is known for, and even random “inn-cidents.”

Both tools can be found in the Downloads section.

Wolph42 has developed a few tools for the computer-savvy WFRP Gamesmaster who owns a copy of Microsoft’s Excel. The first is a trade tool based on the rules found in “Death on the Reik,” complete with MadAlfred’s Imperial and non-Imperial Gazetteers (used with permission). The second tool is handy for keeping track of large combats, quickly resolving blind opposed tests, and quite a bit else.

Check them out in the Downloads section!