Editing Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay (section)

== Editions ==
Over the years, Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay has had four editions, with much [[skub]] over which one is best.  The only thing that anyone can seem to agree on is 3rd Edition was shit.

=== First Edition ===
Published by Games Workshop themselves in 1986, First Edition is... strange.  It was made before a lot of Fantasy's setting had solidified into what we know today, and it shows.  Karl Franz is a weak old man who is assassinated part way through one of the modules for example.  The game was a gleeful mashup of the Basic Roleplaying System used by Runequest and Call of Cthulhu with AD&D, bringing the dynamics of humans, elfs, dwarves, and halflings into a gritty, dirt covered world where every combat had a good chance of permanently maiming a character.  The combination was an instant classic, and Empire In Flames was an iconic introduction to the Old World that would go onto inspire many authors, including William King's Gotrek and Felix series.

=== Second Edition ===
Published by Green Ronin in 2004, Second Edition mostly built on the first.  It faced the unenviable job of matching the increasingly high fantasy bent world the tabletop game was building with the low power feel of the first editions, not always gracefully but in general it managed.  It was notable for adding a number of new careers, including the aforementioned Chaos Champion, Grail Knight, and Vampire paths.  The flaws of second edition mostly came down to the era when it was released, where companies were pumping out books quicker and quicker, often with high railroading, which can lead to problems in a system where combat is so lethal. Still, the books for Bretonia, Norsca, Kislev and the Border Princes are generally considered high marks, and you can always play the old modules with the new ruleset. Also the Skaven book, which in addition to letting you play as Skaven in campaigns, also gave some of the most in-depth background to the teeming little ratmen in existence and is a good read for anyone interested their fluff.

The second edition divided the ridiculous large amount of skills into actual skills and talents. Skills existed as Basic Skills, i.e: skills that any character could roll for, even without being trained in the skill, but with a penalty of halving the Characteristic and rounding up, and as Advanced Skills which required the training, no matter what. Talents were in turn, for the most part, advantages that influenced the use of Skills, Characteristics or Actions, either at all times or under special circumstances.

Another thing that the second edition has sorted out positively were Skill Groups by making use of categorization. Skill Groups refered to skills that consisted of "sub-skills", but where each sub-skill counts as a standalone Skill that had to be learned in order to be used without any penalties. Examples of Skill Groups were skills like Common Knowledge: Land X and Common Knowledge: Land Y. Both skills belong to the Common Knowledge skill group but are actually two standalone skills. While not a change in the mechanic itself, the way this is presented in the Corebook allowed both the GM and the players to see through how the system has been built without being overwhelmed by a clusterfuck of 100+ uncategorized skills, like in the first edition. The same method has been applied to Talents, i.e: Talent Groups.

While 1E made use of the standard set of dice (d4, d6, d8, d10 etc) of other popular Roleplaying Games, the second edition made use of two d10 exclusively, incorporating D% in Characteristic and Skill tests, and 1 or 2d10 for damage rolls.

=== Third Edition, aka the bad one ===
Published by Fantasy Flight in 2009, having acquired the rights to both WFRP and its sister game [[Dark Heresy]], Third Edition is almost universally reviled by fans. Ditching d% for funky custom dice, tokens, and a pile of cards, Third Edition was more board game than RPG, and the box set (because it never independently released the book) only had enough for three players and the GM.  Meanwhile, the story itself was much more heavily weighted toward high fantasy cooperation between Humans, Elves, and Dwarves, generally leaning away from the blood, mud, and shit that had characterized first and second editions, robbing the series of everything that made it special. The game was only active for 3 years before Fantasy Flight declared it dead, and good riddance. That being said, a lot of the ideas from this game and transfer them into the [[Star Wars Roleplaying Game]], which is generally playable. Generally.

=== Fourth Edition ===
Published by [[Cubicle 7]] in 2018, 4e is a return to the ideas of first and second edition. D% is back!  No cards or tokens! It basically puts us right back where we were in 2004, which could be bad or could be good, hard to tell at this point. The biggest change the system makes is combat. Combat is now a series of opposed skill tests, with damage being dealt if the attacker outdoes the defender in Success Levels, even if both are in the negatives. That means it's possible to hit an enemy AND critically fumble, but also reduces the whiff factor that plagues early levels of a lot of percentile systems. After months of playing, 4th edition is much like 2nd Edition: fights are fast and positioning is more critical, magic is more consistent, and set of optional rules let GMs to choose how heroic their Warhammer will be. Only problem? Cubicle 7 screwed proofreading and there's a lot of errata to take into account. Though PDFs (and probably newer print) have been updated and do not require an errata (for now at least). Shooting is overpowered, though.

There was also some amount of controversy over the character artwork, which had things such as a black Empire Noble and an obese Smuggler (Dark Heresy 1E had so few non-white characters in the art that you could count them on one hand so bring it on). Much [[skub|polite and calm debate]] was had over this matter and its place within the Warhammer Fantasy universe.

4e's career and character advancement changed significantly, with a reduced number of careers (though supplements slowly build that number up, with ''Up in Arms'' providing a sizeable number of careers based in other old world countries). Instead of jumping around different careers that could have very little to do with one another as you progressed, now each career has '''4 ranks''', with each rank having an attached societal prestige. This makes sense for a good number of careers, such as military and religious ones, but not so much for Beggar, Villager or [[Flagellant]], for instance. A player can get an advancement in a skill that's not within the career at 2x the XP cost. Changing careers is still an option, though unless you can make a solid argument to the GM (like an Engineer or Doctor temporarily switching to Scholar during a university visit), you'll start the new one at rank 1. Also, all careers have some advancement for characteristics which are rank locked: the cross means you can get them anytime, the crossed axes at rank 2, the skull at rank 3 and the shield at rank 4. Why use symbols that can confuse new players and take time to make sense of instead of simply using R1, R2, R3, R4 to represent the rank needed is anyone's guess.

The prestige is separated in 3 tiers: Brass, Silver and Gold, representing lower, middle and higher class, with each one going from 1 (lowest) to 5 (highest), save specific exceptions, like Noble 4, who has Gold 7, or the Flagellant who stays at Brass 0 throughout. They also indicate how well off your character is. Just like in real life, belonging to a higher tier makes you earn more money from your job and grants you bonuses when dealing with people of lower tiers. However, if you don't maintain the appearance by showing off your rank and eating as expected, you might end losing status, because hey, if the Watch Captain is always scrounging for food with the beggars, he surely won't mind the extra tax on his salary! Speaking of which, you can earn money from just doing your job instead of going out and adventuring.

Because Fourth Edition seems mostly as a way of reliving the glory days of First (and occasionally Second) edition, most of the published materials are translations or rewrites of first or second edition adventures.

====Fourth Edition's Books====
Cublice 7 sells both physical and PDF versions of most of its 4th edition's books, and Foundry VTT modules for a couple of them, along with PDFs of individual small adventures. They offer a couple of free things as well, such as a couple of the aforementioned adventures, and rules from converting previous edition's characters to 4th edition. 

<tabs>
<tab name="Splatbooks">
* '''Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay Rulebook''': The main rulebook, as you could guess from the title.
* '''Archives Of the Empire''': Explores the Dwarves, Halflings and Wood Elves in the Empire, and the locations they originate from - Karak Azgaraz, the Moot, and Laurelon.
** '''Archives Of the Empire Volume II''': Lore and rules for the Ogres wandering Sigmar's realm, plus astrology and star signs, magic items, rules about taking your characters through massed combat, and a new location in the form of a hospice near Altdorf, with [[Richter Kless|an all too familiar guest]].
** '''Archives of the Empire Volume III''': Rules for running businesses, worshipping lesser-known deities and some alternate rules for magic.
* '''The Imperial Zoo''': A bestiary with new creatures and creature traits, rules from gathering alchemical and magical ingredients from the critters you slay, and a few pregenerated characters in case your group wants to follow the journal-like narrative the book is presented in. 
* '''Up in Arms''': The book of all things war, including rules to play as handgunners, greatswordsmen, mercenaries, Tilean humans, joining a knightly order, using cannons, additional weapons and armours, expanded hirelings, Talents, Endeavours, a reworked critical wounds system, and mounted combat.
* '''The Winds of Magic''': The book of all things magic, with a deeper look into the eight Imperial Colleges, an expanded spell list, new arcane careers that don't necessarily mean "mage", rules about carrying out rituals, and many NPCs between possible patrons and nemeses.

</tab>
<tab name="Setting">
* '''Middenheim: City of the White Wolf''': The first book of the series exploring the Empire's cities, it details the capital of Middenland and its surroundings, its inhabitants, presents rules for making characters from the region, and a few creatures one could run into while visiting.
* '''Altdorf: Crown Of the Empire''': The second of the cities' books, taking a closer look at the Imperial capital and the nearby locations, the NPCs and powers that move among its walls, and the things it offers to adventurers of all standings.
* '''Salzenmund: City of Salt and Silver''': Third of the Empire cities' books, examining the rich northern city and its inhabitants, providing rules to play as one of them, and how to run a smuggling ring or a mining concern.
* '''Sea of Claws''': Vikings! Takes a look at the titular water feature and the lands around it from Couronne to Troll Country, gives rules for braving the seas, ship-to-ship combat, trading, a whole Class - Seafarers - and the related carreers, random encounters for when sailing the waves, and the accompanying beasties that live in salt water and pirates that move across it, including rules for making Norse PCs. Includes some old faces like [[Wulfrik the Wanderer|Wulfrik]], [[Awesome|pirate slayer dwarf]] Long Drong, and the ridiculously powerful Arch-Sealord Vrisk Ironscratch, a member of the dreaded Council of Thirteen that would wipe his ship's deck with your group... [[Rape|if they could get past its 8 Warp Lightning Cannons]].

</tab>
<tab name="Adventures">
* '''Warhammer Fantasy Starter Set''': A classical starter set with the basic rules, pregenerated characters, dice, an introductory adventure taking place in Ubersreik...
* '''Rough Nights and Hard Days''': A series of five adventures that can be used on their own or woven together in a single campaign. Also presents the rules for playing as Gnomes, a race that hasn't been around WF since the earliest editions, and a section about pub games.
* '''The Enemy Within:''' The classic campaign brought back and remastered for the latest edition, with features like optional little sidebars on how to spice things up (read: have [[Dwarf Fortress|FUN*]]) if [[Grognard|veteran players]] are getting a bit too metagamey. Each volume also has an associated Companion book, containing commentaries from the original adventures' authors, and things you can sprinkle around its parent module (or elsewhere) such as little tidbits going a bit more in depth about the locations and organisations, random encounters, smaller adventures, new spells, creatures and NPCs, and so on and so forth.
* '''Ubersreik Adventures''': Six scenarios playable as their own thing or all toghether in a single campaign. Five of them had been published separately in PDF form, the last one was made specifically for the book, and to tie the end of this campaign with the start of Enemy Within, if the group wants to.
* '''Ubersreik Adventures 2''': Expanding on the Starter Set's contents, this book takes a deeper look at Ubersreik and its fate, along with suggestion on how to incorporate consequences from the players' past adventures, and five new scenarios.
</tab>
<tab name="Web Supplements">
* '''Sullasara's Spells of Unrivalled Utility:''' 
* '''Blood and Bramble - A Study of Witches, Their Wiles and Ways:''' 
* '''The Emperor's Wrath:''' Has rules for the famous Imperial [[Steam Tanks]] and an adventure involving rescuing one.
* '''The Warband of Bayl Many-Eyes:''' A mini-supplement involving stats for a band of [[Nurgle]]-marked Chaos Warriors.

</tab>
</tabs>


[[Category:Roleplaying]]
[[Category:Warhammer Fantasy]]