Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay

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In the grim, dark, grimdark fantasy version of Late Medieval Germany, you will roll up peasants and be slain by fantastical creatures and Daemon lords vastly more powerful than your character can ever hope to become, no matter how much experience he gains. Unless you have the Tome of Corruption supplement, in which case, you can be a badass motherfucking Chaos viking.

Either that, or he'll just die of cholera.

Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay is, as its name implies, a roleplaying game set in the world of Warhammer Fantasy Battles. It has had a checkered past, going through a number of different publishers and frequently sitting for years in development limbo.

Although the setting is occasionally Tolkienesque, it generally takes far more inspiration from the real world, being essentially an alternate universe version of Europe circa the 1500s. This means that firearms are fairly common but also fairly inaccurate. Similarly, magic exists, but it has a chance of raping you with eldritch energy. Humans, as well as their dwarf and elf allies, are opposed by beastmen, orcs, daemons, trolls, and all manner of other horrible things that may inflict loss of life and limb, usually with far darker interpretations than their Dungeons & Dragons counterparts.

Nearly every portion of character creation can be rolled leading to amusing tales of a peasant, a noble, a doctor, and a sailor getting together to claim a lost dwarven stronghold. The best class is ratcatcher, as it has the most important piece of equipment in the game, a small but vicious dog.

The system in general, especially in combat, is extremely (and often hilariously) lethal, and has many rules for crippling injuries and critical hits. This can cause, for example, a lowly badger bite to result in the loss of limbs, and turns attempting to mount a horse into a dangerous endeavour only undertaken by the most foolhardy of warriors.

It is also probably the only high fantasy universe, in which magic is not (terribly) OP. Not so much because the rules don't have spells that can deal 4*1d10+4 damage every hit having a chance to be critical, dealing another 1d10 damage, which keeping in mind that a PC min/maxed and lucky to can at most have 22 hitpoints and 13 damage reduction is quite a bit. No. It's because of the fact casting even a lowly fireball has the chance to open a rift to the realm of chaos that sucks you in so your ass can be eternally fucked by Slaanesh.

Fantasy Flight Games made a shitty spinoff in later years, which they conveniently forgot to label as 3rd Edition, merely re-launching it under the overall brand. It completely abandoned the 2nd Edition system and has begun using "Custom Dice", "Action Cards", and premade character sheets, leading many to comment it plays more like a board game than a true WFRP successor. Others make the argument that it is the best iteration of WFRP yet - lacking the broken looseness of 1st, and free of the crappy setting of 2nd. There's also remarkably little rules bitching, since everything is on the cards and the books never need to be summoned. People tend to come to disagreement about the matter. In discussions on Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, be aware that the focus is practically always on 2nd Edition, with veterans of 1st Edition often mixing the rules, and 3rd Edition lingers in neglected obscurity.