Chopxsticks wrote:
I just need to see if there is a bestiary in the book. I remember 8th Edition rule book being 50/50 rules and just art pictures... I want to know if GW forced them to cram 100 pages of Golden Daemon painted models into this... =/

 HorticulusDK wrote:
Do we already have info on potential translation ? I've seen mainly asking for Spanish and French.

I will buy it in English anyway (even if I hope Cubicle7 books are better translated than GW ones...), but still.

And same question for the AOS one. Really looking forward to this one too (as it seems to me that WFRP 4e won't be too much a "new" product in term of fluff for someone who played 1st and 3rd edition).

We’ve had a few successful game launches down the years, and generally we like to think we know our business... but ok. We just had to up the print run of WFRP thanks to the level of pre-orders in the first *3 hours*.

Chopxsticks wrote:
So some information? only 4 playable races... not sounding promising imo and with the poor level of communication I wonder what future releases are going to be like...

In the last few weeks we’ve talked a little more about what you can expect from Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, opened pre-orders for the rulebook and starter set, and attended a tremendous Warhammer Fest. We’ve had such a fantastic response, thanks to everyone who has pre-ordered or gotten in touch with us, it really means a lot to all of us working on the game.

Today we’re taking a more detailed look at the game system. We’ve already said that it’s going to be a new implementation of the familiar d100 dice system, that you’ll be able to modify it to suit your play style, and that it will offer resolution options with a variety of levels of detail.

When a test is called for – generally a situation where a character is attempting an action, or reacting to an action affecting them – the GM has three choices:

1 – GM decision based on the characters’ abilities
Keeping the game flowing smoothly and quickly is important to keep everyone actively engaged in the adventure. Sometimes, especially when the outcome doesn’t really matter all that much, or the most likely outcome is pretty obvious, the GM is better off eyeballing the relev
ant character(s) abilities and making a call as to whether or not the action succeeds.

When situations are resolved this way, players will need to show trust and respect to the GM – the decision will need to be accepted as logical and impartial and not signal the start of a discussion!

2 – A simple pass/fail test
This is the one most players are familiar with! You decide which characteristic or skill to test, adjust for the difficulty of the test (for example, a hard difficulty subtracts 20 from your ability) and then roll equal to or under that total to succeed. It’s simple (hence the name), quick, straightforward, and tells you if you succeed or fail.

The downside of the quick pass/fail test is that the action stops dead if you fail. It’s fine in many situations, but that hard ‘No’ can be unsatisfying. And if you have grim and gritty, low-skilled characters, they can fail a lot, and that can get frustrating.

But don’t worry, because we’ve included the Dramatic Test – read on!

3 – A more nuanced dramatic test giving a range of outcomes and success levels
Sometimes you need to know what happens next, rather than just ‘yes’ or ‘no’, ‘pass’ or ‘fail’. The Dramatic Test helps you generate an outcome instead. Using Success Levels to show just how well or poorly you’ve done, these tests give you a result that keeps the story moving.

Rather than just failing to jump across the ravine and plunging to your death, maybe you almost made it and are left hanging onto a root at the other side of the gorge. The negative success levels of a Dramatic Test can help to keep the game interesting and help guard against arbitrary and disproportionate dice-based punishment.
Similarly, the positive success levels mean you can succeed beyond your wildest dreams, with unanticipated consequences piling good fortune at your feet, or scrape past by the skin of your teeth, achieving most of what you wanted, but with some complications.

The Dramatic Test is a tool for the GM to make tests meaningful and… well… dramatic!

You can mix and match these tests in your game to your heart’s content! You might mostly prefer the quicker and more narrative GM’s choice and just switch to dramatic rolls when the vitally important stuff happens. You might prefer the transparency and sense of fairness that dice rolling brings, and stick to Simple Tests to keep things moving quickly. It’s entirely up to you, and the way your group prefers to play.

That’s been one of the core design principles of this edition of the game – to give you the tools to play your Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay. We’re giving you lots of options to help tailor the game to you and your group.

Next time we’ll talk a bit more about fighting in Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay Fourth Edition!

If you’d like to find out more about the Rulebook, Collector’s Limited Edition Rulebook or Starter Set, you can check them out on the webstore.

Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay Preview - Combat

The combat system for WFRP Fourth Edition has its roots in earlier editions of the game, but we’ve made significant changes. The design goals were to speed up fights and eliminate boring stalemates arising from repeated attack roll failure.

When you get into a confrontation, everyone acts in Initiative order. We’ve added in a few alternative options here for you to tailor the game to your play style. You can keep things simple and just use the Characteristic, or introduce some randomness and deploy the GM catchphrase ‘Roll for initiative’, plus several other permutations.

Every combat round you get to move and do something. The ‘something’ might be using a skill, making an attack, casting a spell, and so on. An attack isn’t meant to only represent one swing of a sword arm. It’s movement, positioning, timing, dodges, feints and parries - all the things that happen in exciting fantasy combat.

D100 systems can suffer from so-called ‘whiff factor’ – endless inaction due to everyone failing rolls time and time again. This was something we wanted to eliminate as much as possible. One of the new mechanics we introduced to help with this in combat is called Advantage. You can gain Advantage from sources including Surprise, Charging and winning an Attack Test. Each point of Advantage gives you +10 to your Attack Tests, and represents you pressing your foe back, gaining control of the space, gaining confidence, leaping onto the table, kicking sand in their face, or whatever you feel is appropriate to the battle at hand.

When you attack your foe, you both make a Weapon Skill Test and compare your success levels. If the attacker wins they will have the chance to do damage and gain a point of Advantage. If the defender wins, they don’t inflict damage but do gain the Advantage as they dodge or parry and take the upper hand. There is always an outcome from a combat round – the least that can happen is someone gains Advantage.

You can win multiple points of Advantage, and you keep them until you lose an Attack Test, take a wound or the combat ends. So, if you keep rolling well, you’ll get in your stride and do better and better. But if you lose a Test you’ll lose all your Advantage. It’s a huge amount of fun, especially if you have the Talents or Spells that let you steal Advantage! You get a real sense of turning the tide of battle, or of getting unstoppable momentum and cleaving through your foes.

There are loads of possibilities and outcomes that these rules bring to the table: a combatant can whale on a bunch of lesser foes first, build up a pool of Advantage and then unleash that on the big baddie. Combining the various Skills and Talents that allow characters to work together to make the most of Advantage adds a tactical edge to this exciting way of determining the outcome of a fight.

But it’s certainly not all one-way traffic! Adversaries have special abilities that are powered by Advantage, so can become progressively more powerful. And there’s loads of fun times for the GM in deciding when to use monster abilities, or simply keep a bonus to hit.

And if your foes are building their Advantage up to truly scary levels, Characters can use a point of Resilience (more on this in a later preview) to remove it.

Critical hits are a staple of WFRP, and in Fourth Edition occur on especially successful blows, as indicated by the roll of a double. In addition to extra damage and special wounds, critical hits can inflict a variety of Conditions that change the way combat works for those who receive them.

That’s the core of the new combat system. Of course, there’s much more to it - Strength and Toughness work in ways familiar to players of First and Second Edition, as does armour. Hits are locational. There are fumbles, and ranged combat throws in some interesting and original quirks.

We’ll be talking more about Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay in future previews. Pre-orders for the WFRP Rulebook, Collector’s Limited Edition Rulebook and WFRP Starter Set are open, you can find out more here. http://shop.cubicle7store.com/Warhammer-Fantasy-Roleplay

I don't want to see, hear, read, or think about the End Times, or anything near or adjacent to it. All I want from a WHF RPG is WHF as-was, the setting I enjoyed for 25+ years that still had huge potential for new material within its existing scope. Half the planet was just big blank spaces on the map with a name and some vague concepts attached, if even that - I want Far Cathay and the jungles of Ind, I want Tilean intrigues and details of the Elven cities(and divergent cultures?) outside of Ulthuan, I want to adventure during the Empires of the Black Plague and Three Emperors and Vampire Wars eras, and battle Fimir in WHF's equivalent of the Dark Ages.

 reds8n wrote:
via FB

A bunch of cool stuff

Our very own The_WFRP_Companion had a chat with Dom McDowall at UKGE, asking a number of 4E questions as requested by the community. Here is his summary of the response, repasted from the Discord server:

1) Setting will be 8th edition focus but generally should be backwards compatible.

2) The rumour PDF is out this weekend is FALSE, no clue where it came from.

3) No era books planned, lots of modern places like regions of the Reik, Lustria, Ultjuan are more the focus.

4) Starter book is very distinct to core book, it's got simple rules and the adventure but the sourcebook on Ubrtsreik has lots of mileage.

5) Conversion for 2nd to 4th isn't planned but they'll definetly consider it if they have time.

6) No gnomes.

7) On Fimir it was, "I know the answer to that but I can't say".

8) If they get to do Ulthuan Elf magic is a yes. They are familiar with fan sources on that note, like Swords of the South.

9) Core rule book should very much be all you need, lots of spells he said.

10) Advantage isn't capped. They used tokens to track it, dice would also work.

11) TEW Director's Cut will be a prequel setting, still rooted in 1e, but modern otherwise. It will have lots of surprises for people who already played it, no word on specifics like Gideon the... person. Who's not anything else.

12) The whole TEW end chapter is being redone - no Empire in Flames and probably no SRiK.

13) They might not be able to run a contest, as this needs GW approval. In fact, everything said online needs approval really. But they can easily help out with Five Page Fiction.

14?) Told him about the Subreddit, Discord, and some personal WFRP conversion projects. Talked a bit about Vermintide - they're buds with Fatshark. Dom grew up with 1e, he's a huge fan.

And yeah, that's about all.

Today we’re going to tackle one of the most frequently asked questions about the new edition of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay: what, exactly, is the stat line? So, with no further ado, here it is:

Weapon Skill (WS) – close-quarters fighting ability

Ballistic Skill (BS) – ranged fighting ability

Strength (S) – physical strength

Toughness (T) – hardiness and healthiness

Initiative (I) – speed of thought, reaction, and awareness

Agility (Agi) – coordination and natural athleticism

Dexterity (Dex) – ability to perform delicate manual tasks

Intelligence (Int) – powers of thought, analysis, and understanding

Willpower (WP) – strength of mind and determination

Fellowship (Fel) – ability to influence and befriend others

Each of these Characteristics has a numerical value, along the same general scale as those used in the first and second editions of the game. That said, as WFRP4 has no upper limit, some nasty creatures have Characteristics soaring significantly higher than 100! Whatever the number, the first or ‘tens’ digit of each Characteristic is its bonus value, which is used in a variety of different ways, including limiting Talents and defining spells, and determining Wound loss in combat.

Characteristics are used as the basis for your Skills. Much like second edition, skills come in two kinds, basic and advanced. Everyone has access to basic Skills, but advanced Skills can only be used if you have learned them, for example as part of your career.

You’ll note that we have Dexterity and Agility — why both? Those familiar with RPGs will have seen those terms used interchangeably. Dwarfs are a great example for why we wanted to include each as a discrete Characteristic. Dwarfs are known for their exquisite works of craftmanship rather than for being flexible acrobatics, and we believed supporting that difference was important, allowing Dwarfs to make intricate machines, jewellery, and artefacts, but not have a natural flair for dance. So we used Dexterity to reflect manual dexterity, leaving Agility to define nimbleness of the body.

Similarly, we wanted to differentiate between speed of body and speed of mind, so we have both Agility and Initiative. Agility is used for tests involving dodging, dancing and similar movements of the body. By comparison, Initiative is used for perceiving, reacting and intuiting what’s happening in the world around you.

Stay tuned for more previews in the coming weeks! We’re hard at work with the finishing stages of preparing the game and will keep you posted as we finalise delivery times. The PDF will be the first thing released, followed by the physical books. Thanks to everyone who has pre-ordered the game, both directly through us and through your friendly local game store.