Review - Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay

Title: Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay Written By: Games Workshop Design Studio Price: �18.95 Publisher: Hogshead Publishing Pages: 400 (including covers) Reviewer: General Tangent. What we have here is a golden oldie from British role-playing. The original release of Warhammer appeared in 1986 in a hardback format by Games Workshop and it was a companion of sorts to Warhammer Fantasy Battle. After the release of the hardback came a paperback edition that cleared up a lot of errors that had appeared in the first printing. This new printing I am reviewing is published under license by Hogshead games, and fixes errors from the Games Workshop paperback printing. The main difference in this edition and the previous two Games Workshop editions is the dropping of the colour plates. Warhammer has four classes, Academic, Ranger, Rogue and Warrior. Within each class are careers and depending on the race chosen, you then roll on the career chart to see what you did before you became an adventurer. In the basic edition, players may select from the following races, Dwarf, Elf, Halfling or Human. (There is a Gnome race contained in the separate Apocrypha Now book). The design team opted to use a career-based system, rather than go down the path of levels and extra hit points. This means that a character can progress gradually rather than gaining a group of bonuses with each new career. An advance scheme and skills constitute a career; in addition, the trappings you would need to perform that job. The advance scheme consists of bonuses to the ability scores of the player character. The unique thing about this system is that once you have purchased a +10 bonus you need to find a career with a +20 bonus because you ignore any other +10 to that ability score. The +20 is actually then only worth +10 because you have already purchased a +10. If you started a career with a +20, then you would have to buy it twice as two separate advances. Clear? Good. How the Mechanics of the Warhammer system work The Warhammer system is percentile based for easy resolution. Combat is easy, just roll under the appropriate ability score and you hit. To find out where you hit, reverse the number and consult the hit location table on the character sheet. Warhammer combat is deadly and it not unusual for combatants to have limbs severed. Player characters can usually avoid this fate by expending a Fate Point, fate points are always in short supply and nobody starts the game with more than four. If you have a skill, you can usually claim a bonus to relevant ability score checks for it. Background The basis of the well thought out background is the Roman Empire with a strong Germanic theme. Chaos threatens to overwhelm the Empire; the players can either play in the prepackaged epic campaign or do something else as usual. One thing that sets this game apart from any other fantasy game on the market is the lack of decimalisation because the game uses the Old English system of LSD (Crowns, Shillings and Pence). Overall Once bought this book becomes a nice self-contained purchase and you need not buy anything else. Ratings Overall: 3/5 Value For Money: 4/5 Usefulness: 4/5 Presentation: 4/5

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