From out of the darkness and mists, a strange mewling sound was heard on the faint breeze that caresses the forest air. The trees, normal looking enough by day, now seem to reach for the small band of travelers with long bony fingers at the ends of distended arms of impossible length. "It's just your imagination," they kept saying to themselves, "nothing more than a spooky, misty night." Then THEY appeared! Rats, gigantic rats crawling out from the undergrowth. They were as big as men and stood upright. The evil glint in their eyes as the things moved towards the quickly panicking group was not near as frightening as the reflection of the moonlight from the misshapen steel weapons they held in their paws. There were three or four of them, then a dozen, then too many to count as the hapless travelers were overrun by hordes of the vermin....

Welcome to the Empire

Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay is a game that takes place on an alternate Earth, an Earth of death and darkness at what would be around the 16th century by our history. Very little of the world is still in the hands of man or his allies the dwarfs and elves. The largest portion of the planet has been overrun by the forces of Chaos and other similarly vile creatures. Like any other role playing game (RPG) Warhammer requires the player to "act out" the thoughts and actions of a fictional character, using imagination, pencil, paper and dice. The game is typically played with a group of three or more players and another person who is the Game Master (GM). The GM acts as the referee, narrator and portrays all other people, beings, creatures, monsters and even the forces of nature that the players might encounter. All events that transpire within a RPG are fluid and the chain of events that are planned will be altered by the characters actions or in-actions, for good or bad. Although this is the Second Edition of Warhammer, being given a bold new re-write and formatting, Games Workshop decided to continue to market it under the exact same name, not even bothering to add the phrase "2nd Edition" to the title. And why should they? Everyone can tell by looking at the gleaming hardcover volumes of this new release that it's an updated and improved version of the old, cumbersome game. A game that was wildly successful with a huge following for the better part of 30 years, despite it's massive flaws in format, rules design and lack of updates.

Introduction

The writers of this version are really interested and excited about what they have done to the game. They are so happy about all the changes that they spend an entire chapter discussing the basics of role playing and the Warhammer world with us. We also get some very nice introspect about why certain changes were made and why other things were not changed. To many, this may not seem like that big of a deal, but I'm sure that most of the old Warhammer gamers will appreciate it. After spending years trying to decipher the meaning of a game that was originally written in German and then poorly translated into English for mass market and then never had anything corrected for almost 30 years. Perhaps the most important change that has taken place was the organization. My God, I can actually find what I am looking for in this book! My old Warhammer book looks like a file cabinet because of all the little different colored tabs I had to put on the pages as a quick reference. Unattractive and it makes the book look kind of like a peacock, not to mention the difficulty of transport or storage without knocking off the highly needed tabs. There is also a short example of game play in the first chapter.

Character Creation

The most obvious change in the game is the character. I have already discussed this in detail in my review Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay Character Pack The creation process has been greatly streamlined, making it easier to generate them. You still have the basic four races, human, dwarfs, elves and halflings. Each race has its own strengths and weaknesses and they have changed quite a bit from the previous version of the game. For example, neither dwarf nor halflings can be spellcasters of ANY type, not even priests. However, the dwarf does have the career of Runebearer available, a magic craft of sorts. Because of some of the radical changes to the races, it might be wise to read over this section carefully before making a choice.

The profile (the stats) of the character has been divided into two sections, main and secondary. The main profile has all of the things that are commonly called upon in the game and these are the most likely to change as the character grows in experience. Weapon Skill, Ballistic Skill, Strength, Toughness, Agility, Intelligence, Will Power and Fellowship are things that are used in almost every aspect of the game. The secondary profile are things that are still needed, just not as often and for the most part, they seldom get changed in the course of play. Stuff like Attacks, Wounds, Strength Bonus, Toughness Bonus, Movement, Magic and Insanity Points are all things that change very little or are changed only through great effort on the part of the character.

Rolling up the character has been made much easier and starting careers all have at least one redeeming ability. One of the things that I really like about this new version is the thing called Shallya's Mercy. If your stats really blow, you can call upon this new feature to replace any ONE stat with the average stat of that race. Most players do not generate super high numbers for all their stats. As a player, I have often found myself struggling to play a character that had an incredibly low stat (or several) but the ones I needed/wanted high were there, so I dealt with it. With this feature, a player can eliminate that one, really sick roll and move on.

Careers are what drives this game. Within the confines of the careers are additional skills, attribute increases, powers and status for the character. Starting careers are still random, by race, but there are now a goodly number of starting careers available specifically to each race. Once a career has been determined, the character gets a free advance, in other words, one of the bonus attributes is considered to have been gained as completing his/her apprenticeship in the given career.

Careers

Here is the meat of the game for most players. Instead of character classes,Warhammer uses a career system. There are two types, Basic and Advanced. All characters start with a basic career that grants them additional starting skills and talents, status in the world (or lack of) and equipment. There is also a chance to improve the attributes in each career. Most careers offer at least three possible advancements, but some can grant much more. As the character grows and gains all the advancements of his career, he can "graduate" into a better career by using the career exit. If none of the exits appeal to you, there is the option to move over to a basic career of your choice at the cost of 200 experience points, witch can be done without completing the current career. There are 60 different basic careers listed in this book! Every one of them has good points, that's one of the many small changes that the designers made certain of this time around.

The Advanced careers are more powerful versions of the Basic ones in most cases. The truly powerful characters of the game have Advanced careers. These are things like military officers, wizards, politicians, property and business owners and the like. Each of these individuals has different forms of power, be it physical, magical or mere influence on others. There are 53 of these careers listed. overall, there is more included in this single volume of the game than a player could possibly hope to go through in a lifetime.

Skills & Talents

As with almost everything else in the game, the skills got changed about as well. Now stuff like nightvision is no longer a skill. It's a talent, something you are born with or acquired through great effort. Many careers will offer the character the chance to gain a new talent or two and all will offer at least a couple of skills (not always new ones). That was one of the biggest flaws with the old game system. A player would be forced to run through many different careers that would offer nothing new to them at all. Many GMs, myself included, instituted a "free exit" option. This meant that if a character had fulfilled all the requirements to exit a career then it did not cost the normal 100 experience points to move on. The designers have done something to change that this time around.

While the attribute advances can still only be gained once in a character's lifetime (Hector took his 5 to intelligence in his last career, so can't take it again in this career because he already gained it), the same skill or talent can be taken as many as three times! The player still has to spend 100 experience points each time, but taking a skill multiple times greatly improves his/her chances of being successful at it. In the case of talents, it will sometimes improve the ability itself. For example, Hector already has nightvision and enters a career where he can take it again. By taking it a second time, since this talent is always active, his range of vision increases. Skills and talents greatly affect the way a character interacts with others, so the ability to increase the skill itself rather than having to improve the attribute that it is based on (like the old system) greatly improves game play.

Equipment

Yet another thing that careers will offer the character is the ability to gain better equipment. The character's rise (or decrease depending on how you view it) in status allows him/her access to the better items that his/her career uses. This can be anything from medical and other supplies, armor and weapons, tools for the profession or even magic items and spells. Many items are considered contraband in the Empire and thus have limited access. Others are reserved for the nobility or heroes of the realm and are similarly restricted. Still others, such as explosives, are just far too dangerous to allow commoners to have. Careers can and will open many doors to the character where these items are secured. Like skills, talents and attributes, each career will often have a "equipment set" needed to preform the profession. These are items that MUST be acquired prior to being allowed to enter the career, normally purchased at the time of the career change although sometimes they are gained beforehand. If a character has not got the equipment needed to perform that profession when he/she is ready to exit to the next, the career is not considered "complete" and the lost items must be replaced before allowed to exit at the normal experience cost.

Combat, Damage and Movement

Once more, massive changes were made in this area. The combat system is still basically the same. You must roll less than the BS or WS skill (depending on if you are using ranged or melee weapons) to hit. All damage is pretty much the same, a regular d6 determines it. Add any damage modifiers you have (Strength Bonus) that apply and then the target subtracts armor and Toughness Bonus from the total. The end result is how many wounds at inflicted.

Granted, there is a bit more to it than that. Each weapon has a +\- to damage modifier (mostly a 0) and some are more effective against certain types of armor (rare). The biggest change to the combat system is the non-combat actions. In the old system, anything you did during combat used an action. So if you needed to attack and move at the same time, you had to charge your opponent. If your opponent was out of your movement range, you could move as close as possible to him and then sit there and become a pincushion as he continued to fire away at you with his ranged weapon. If you had to change weapons for any reason (your ax got wedged in the shield of the enemy so you need to draw your sword to keep fighting) it cost you an attack! Sometimes two. The new game has all kinds of special actions, both simple that cost nothing and complex that might use up an attack, worked into the combat system. This makes surviving combat (something that was often failed under the old rules) much more probable.

Magic

Under the old system, unless you were a spellcaster, you were helpless. Even then, living long enough to gain access to the spells that would keep the character alive was a long shot. Only spellcasters in the old game got the improvements to the attributes that allowed the character to remain unaffected by fear and horror of the chaos monsters. And then their spells were still so very much weaker than the evil casters. Additional volumes opened up new magics to the players, but these volumes weren't released until almost 20 years after the main rules and adventures had been printed. Often, the new supplements that contained spells were intended only for Chaos characters and thus were still unavailable to players. The first true player supplement for magic was released just three years prior to the creation of the new system.

Magic has been divided into several types now; petty, lesser, arcane and divine. The methods of learning new spells has been improved and the access to greater magic has been increased in the form of Wizard Colleges. There is a huge number of spells in this game and they are all accessed through the Lore skills of the game. No longer does a spellcaster have to dredge away and spend massive amounts of experience to learn a new spell. In the old system, a level 4 spell could cost as much as 3200 exp to learn! And then that would only be an attempt to learn the spell! If you failed your roll against Intelligence to learn the spell, then you didn't get the new spell AND the experience points you had worked for so long and hard were GONE. Not to mention the potential side effects (sometimes fatal) of failing the roll.

No, now magic is much easier. As long as a character has the required skills, he/she can cast spells of that particular type. This volume has ten Lore skills, Lesser Magic, Hedge Magic, Arcane Lore (8 different types), Dark Lore (number undisclosed in this volume), and Divine Lore (different for each God/religion). There is also no limit on how many spells can be cast per day. No mana, no nothing! Each spell has a casting difficulty score. This can range from a 1 to 40 or more. Each spellcaster has a Magic rating that can be increased as he/she advances in careers. This determines the number of d10 dice that the wizard rolls when a spell is cast. There are also skills that can improve this number. The dice are then added together to get the result and if that is greater than the difficulty level of the spell, the spell is cast.

The down side of spellcasting is that it taps into the raw forces of the universe. To reflect this, the game employs something called Tzeentch's Curse. If more than one die is used to cast the spell (up to four dice can be rolled depending on skills and Magic attribute) and the result is doubles, triples or quadruples, then something unexpected will happen. The God of Magic, Tzeetch, will strike at the caster for being disturbed and the more dice were rolled, the more deadly the outcome will be. Thus, the more times a spellcaster uses magic in a day, the more times he/she rolls and the greater the chance of bringing down this curse upon themselves. This gives the only limitation that should ever be inflicted on a player, his/her own good judgment about if the spell is really needed.

As well as this new method of spellcasting, there are many new bonuses to casting. The Winds of Magic are fickle and they will ebb and flow according to the time of year, location, etc. In a strong time, when the moon is full for instance, the winds are more powerful, so a bonus to EACH die rolled is gained. On the other hand, if the winds are very low, then it could be a negative to each die, making it much harder to cast the spell. Armor also reduces the casting roll, but this is a negative to the total rather than each die rolled, thus can be overcome more readily.

All the Rest

The last four chapters discuss the religions of the Warhammer world, which is about the same as the previous system or any other game system. Then there is a small section about how to GM this game, mostly about how to hand out rewards and penalties and how to resolved the various opposed rolls and checks of the game. All pretty standard stuff there as well. A rather detailed overview of the Empire, to include the neighbors, allies and threats then follows and last is a sampling of monsters and common creatures.

This last bit is important enough to spend a couple lines on. One of the problems with the old game system was that although it would often mention various animals and creatures in the text or adventures, there were seldom, if ever, any stats given for the common things. Thus a GM would often find himself in the middle of an adventure that has three skeletons rise from the crypt and attack the party. Without any stats on what they are capable of. The only thing listed in the books about skeletons were greater skeletons, things that would kill a new character just by looking at him! And even though it was constantly talked about, an actual Bestiary was never created. The new system has fixed all that. The common animals, non player characters and monsters are listed right here, along with the variations of each. There are also instructions on how to use career templates to make the average monster a bit tougher if you feel the need. personally, I'd have to advise any GM to go out and spend the $20 in buying the Old World Bestiary and be done with it. If what you need isn't in there, then you can start adding templates to create your own creatures.

Recommended: Yes